When his boots were off, she drew blankets over him to the chin. “Now,” she said, “your eyes. They’re terribly tired. I’m going to bathe them.”
He said: “Fiddle! Let me be.”
She laughed and disappeared, and came back in an instant, with a basin of water and a bit of cloth; and she made him lie still while she laved his hot eyelids with the cloth. He rebelled; but the touch of her hands on his forehead was infinitely soothing. He tried to believe these light touches of her fingers woke fires in him. Yet he wanted most of all to lie still, and rest, and sleep....
Her fingers were so soothing on his forehead; presently she brought a larger cloth, wet in cold water, and laid it across his brow and his eyes. He jerked it away; but she protested softly:
“No, no, let it stay. It will make your head better, make you rest.”
His wife, too, had had this foolish notion that there was virtue in a cold compress.
The girl was stroking his forehead lightly, with the tips of her fingers, and running her fingers through his hair, around and around, softly, on his temples.
“I think you’ll go to sleep presently. It’s what you need. You’re so tired.”
He tried to sit up; he protested. “Let be. I’m well enough. Let be.”
She pressed him gently down again, smiling into his hot eyes. “No, no. Lie still, and fall asleep.”