“Fit or unfit, I’m going. I read Karasch’s meaning in his looks when you wouldn’t let him put it in words.”
“Don’t attempt this, Burgwan. Please, please don’t,” she cried with such sweet solicitude for me and such complete indifference to her own danger that I could not but be deeply moved.
“What would happen if Petrov or Gartski got back with a crowd? I’m not strong enough just yet to do any more fighting, but I am strong enough to run away. And run away I’m going to.”
“It may kill you,” she murmured, despondently.
“Not a bit of it. I am getting stronger every moment. See, I can sit up;” and I sat up and tried to smile as if I enjoyed it, although my head seemed almost to split in two with the effort. I can’t have been very successful, for she winced and flinched as though she herself were in suffering.
“You need rest and sleep—you must have it.”
“I can sleep in the saddle. I’m an old hand at that.”
“But the jolting—oh, no, no, you shall not.”
“The jolting won’t hurt me. I can shake my head any old way now.” I shook it, and she and the tent and the bed, the earth itself seemed to come tumbling all about me in a bewildering rush of throbbing pain.
“You nearly fainted then,” she cried. And I suppose I did, for her voice sounded far off and her sorrow-filled face and eyes were looking at me through a hazy film of distance. But I pulled myself together.