The minister's low murmured sentence had supplied her with an answer.
"He is alive." The words touched the springs of life within her and a
glad flush swept over her straining nerves. Reason once more resumed
its sway, and thought flowed through her brain in an unchecked torrent
It seemed to Prudence as though some barrier had suddenly shut off
the simple life which had always been hers, and had opened out for her
a fresh existence in which she found herself alone with the still,
broken body of her lover. For one brief instant her lips quivered, and
a faint in-catching of the breath told of the woman, which, at the
first return of feeling, had leapt uppermost in her. But before the
maturity of emotion brought about the breakdown, a calm strength came
to her aid and steadied her nerves and checked the tears which had so
suddenly come into her eyes. Women are like this. At a crisis in
sickness they rise superior to all emotion. When the crisis is past,
whether for good or ill, it is different.

The water was brought, and the minister set about cleaning the
discoloured flesh, while Prudence looked on in silence. She was very
pale, and her eyes were painfully bright. While her gaze followed the
gentle movements of the minister, her thoughts were running swiftly
over the scenes of her life in which the wounded man had played his
part. She remembered every look of the now closed eyes, and every
expression of his well-loved features. She called to mind his words of
hope, and the carefully-laid plans for his advancement. Nor was there
any taint of his selfishness in her recollection of these things.
Everything about him, to her, was good and true. She loved him with
all the passionate intensity of one who had only just attained to
perfect womanhood. He had been to her something of a hero, by reason
of his headstrong, dominating ways--ways which more often attract the
love of woman in the first flush of her youth than in her maturer,
more experienced years.

The sponging cleaned the flesh of the ghastly stain, and the small
wound with its blackened rim lay revealed in all its horrid
significance. The girl's eyes fixed themselves on it, and for some
seconds she watched the blood as it welled up to the surface. The
meaning of the puncture forced itself slowly upon her mind, and she
realized that it was no accident which had laid her lover low. Her
eyes remained directed towards the crimson flow, but their expression
had change