She was on her knees beside me, bathing my battered face, talking
all the while in a soft voice that I thought wonderfully sweet to
hear.
"Poor boy!" she was saying, over and over again, "poor boy!" And
after she had said it, perhaps a dozen times, I opened my eyes
and looked at her.
"Madam, I am twenty-five!" said I. Hereupon, sponge in hand, she
drew back and looked at me.
A wonderful face--low-browed, deep-eyed, full-lipped. The eyes
were dark and swiftly changeful, and there was a subtle witchery
in the slanting shadow of their lashes.
"Twenty-five!" she repeated, "can it really be?"
"Why not, madam?"
"So very young?"
"Why--" I began, greatly taken aback. "Indeed, I--that is--"
But here she laughed and then she sighed, and sighing, shook her
head.
"Poor boy!" said she, "poor boy!" And, when I would have
retorted, she stopped me with the sponge.
"Your mouth is cut," said she, after a while, "and there is a
great gash in your brow."
"But the water feels delicious!" said I.
"And your throat is all scratched and swollen!"
"But your hands are very gentle and soothing!"
"I don't hurt you, then?"
"On the contrary, the--the pain is very trifling, thank you."
"Yet you fainted a little while ago."
"Then it was very foolish of me."
"Poor--" she hesitated, and looking up at her through the
trickling water, I saw that she was smiling.
"--fellow!" said she. And her lips were very sweet, and her eyes
very soft and tender--for an Amazon.
And, when she had washed the blood from my face, she went to
fetch clean water from where I kept it in a bucket in the corner.
Now, at my elbow, upon the table, lay the knife, a heavy, clumsy
contrivance I had bought to use in my carpentry, and I now,
mechanically, picked it up. As I did so the light gleamed evilly
upon its long blade.
"Put it down!" she commanded; "put it away--it is a hateful
thing!"
"For a woman's hand," I added, "so hideously unfeminine!"
"Some men are so hatefully--hideously--masculine!" she retorted,
her lip curling. "I expected--him--and you are terribly like him."
"As to that," said I, "I may have the same colored eyes and hair,
and be something of the same build--"