"Oh, what should she do?
Where should she hide herself in her grief ?" A few yards from the path grew a stunted tree with a large flat stone at its root.

Thither Beatrice staggered and sank upon the stone, while still the solid earth spun round and round.
Presently her mind cleared a little, and a keener pang of pain shot through her soul.

She had been stunned at first, now she felt.
"Perhaps it was not true; perhaps Elizabeth had been mistaken or had only said it to torment her." She rose.

She flung herself upon her knees, there by the stone, and prayed, this first time for many years--she prayed with all her soul.

"Oh, God, if Thou art, spare him his life and me this agony." In her dreadful pangs of grief her faith was thus re-born, and, as all human beings must in their hour of mortal agony, Beatrice realised her dependence on the Unseen.