Urith started back; each blow seemed to be aimed at and to hit her, who was behind the tree. She felt each stroke as a sharp spasm in her heart.
Fox dragged at his knife, worked it up, down, till he had loosened it; then withdrew it. Then he laid his left hand, muffled in his cloak, against the sycamore trunk, and raised his knife again. "That is not enough," he whispered, and it was to Urith as though he breathed it into her ear. He struck savagely into the side of the tree, as though into a man, under the ribs, and said, "And this for Julian."
Before he could release his blade, Urith had stepped forth and had laid her hand on him.
"Answer me," she said: "What do you mean by those words, 'And this for Julian?'"
CHAPTER XLI. "THAT FOR URITH."
Fox cowered, and retreated step by step before Urith, who stepped forward at every step he retreated. He seemed to contract to a third of his size before her eyes, over which a lambent, phosphorescent fire played. They were fixed on his face; he looked up but once, and then, scorched and withered, let his eyes fall, and did not again venture to meet hers.
Her hands were on his shoulders. It might have been thought that she was driving him backward, but it was not so. He recoiled instinctively; but for her hands he might have staggered and fallen among the scattered stones of the old chapel that strewed the floor.
"Answer me!" said Urith, again. "What did you mean, when you said—'This for Julian?'"
"What did I mean?" he repeated, irresolutely.