The moon has not yet risen, but her
light is in the sky mixed with the pink and purple of the sunset.
The west is heavy with ink-clouds and rich colour, but the east,
where the moon rises, is clear as a rock-pool.
They go across the lawn and through the beech wood and come at
last, through a tangle of underwood and bramble, to a little level
tableland that rises out of the flat hill-top one tableland out of
another. Here is the ring of vast rugged stones, one pierced with a
curious round hole, worn smooth at its edges. In the middle of the
circle is a great flat stone, alone, desolate, full of meaning a stone
that is covered thick with the memory of old faiths and creeds long
since forgotten. Something dark moves in the circle. The French
girl breaks from the children, goes to it, clings to its arm. It is Lord
Yalding, and he is telling her to go.
"Never of the life!" she cries. "If you are mad I am mad too, for I
believe the tale these children tell. And I am here to be with thee
and see with thee whatever the rising moon shall show us."
The children, holding hands by the flat stone, more moved by the
magic in the girl's voice than by any magic of enchanted rings,
listen, trying not to listen.
"Are you not afraid?" Lord Yalding is saying.
"Afraid? With you?" she laughs. He put his arm round her. The
children hear her sigh.
"Are you afraid," he says, "my darling?"
Gerald goes across the wide turf ring expressly to say: "You can't
be afraid if you are wearing the ring.
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