t be crushed with fatigue. My brave darling, you would make me
forget your tender woman's frame, and you are wounded!"

Supporting her--for the ship, reaching the open sea, had begun to roll
more wildly--he led her back into the little room now lighted by the
fitful rays of a swinging lamp. With head averted, she suffered
herself to be seated on a kind of sofa couch.

When he had closed the door, he seized her hand, on which ran streaks
of half-dried blood, and covered it with kisses.

"Ah, Madeleine! here in the sanctuary I had prepared for you, where I
thought you would be so safe, so guarded, tell me that you forgive me
for having brought this injury to you. Wounded, torn, bleeding.... I
who would give all my blood, my life, if life were not so precious to
me now that you have come into it, to save you from the slightest
pain! At least here you are secure, here you can rest, but--but there
is no one to wait on you, Madeleine." He fell on his knees beside her.
"Madeleine, my wife, you must let me tend you." Then, as she shivered
slightly, but did not turn to him, he went on in tones of the most
restrained tenderness mingled with humblest pleading:

"Had it not been for your accident, I had not ventured even to cross
the threshold of this room. But your wound must be dressed; darling,
darling, allow me, forgive me; the risk is too great."

Rising to his feet again he gently pulled at her cloak. Molly spoke
not a word, but untied it at the neck and let it fall away from her
fair young body; and keeping her hooded face still rigidly averted,
she surrendered her wounded arm.

He muttered words of distress at the sight of the broad blood stains;
stepped hurriedly to a little cupboard where such surgical stores as
might be required on board were hoarded, and having selected scissors,
lint, and bandages, came back and again knelt down by her side to cut
off, with eager, compassionate hands, the torn and maculated sleeve.

The wound was but a surface laceration, and a man would not have given
a thought to it in the circumstances. But to see this soft, white
woman's skin, bruised black in parts, torn with a horrid red gap in
others; to see the beauty of this round arm thus brutally marred, thus
twitching with pain--it was monstrous, hideously unnatural in the
lover's eyes!

With tenderness, but unflinchingly, he laved the mangled skin with
cool, fresh water; pulled out, with far greater torture to himself
than to her,