“Well, I'm going to stiffen their backs. Coming Sheila?” And they went.
Left, as she seemed always to be in these days of open mutiny, Nedda said sadly:
“What is coming, Aunt Kirsteen?”
Her aunt was standing in the porch, looking straight before her; a trail of clematis had drooped over her fine black hair down on to the blue of her linen dress. She answered, without turning:
“Have you ever seen, on jubilee nights, bonfire to bonfire, from hill to hill, to the end of the land? This is the first lighted.”
Nedda felt something clutch her heart. What was that figure in blue? Priestess? Prophetess? And for a moment the girl felt herself swept into the vision those dark glowing eyes were seeing; some violent, exalted, inexorable, flaming vision. Then something within her revolted, as though one had tried to hypnotize her into seeing what was not true; as though she had been forced for the moment to look, not at what was really there, but at what those eyes saw projected from the soul behind them. And she said quietly:
“I don't believe, Aunt Kirsteen. I don't really believe. I think it must go out.”
Kirsteen turned.
“You are like your father,” she said—“a doubter.”
Nedda shook her head.