He sat down on the tree and rested his head on his bloodstained hands, and Hazel saw that he was quivering from head to foot. She got up and went over to him.
"Are you sure you aren't hurt?" she asked again.
He looked up at her; big sweat drops were gathering on his face.
"Hurt? No," he murmured; "I'm just plain scared. You looked as if you were dead, lying there so white and still."
[Illustration: "Hurt? No," he murmured; "I'm just plain scared.">[
He reached out one long arm and drew her up close to him.
"Little person," he whispered, "if you just cared one little bit as much as I do, it would be all right. Look at me. Just the thought of what might have happened to you has set every nerve in my body jumping. I'm Samson shorn. Why can't you care? I'd be gooder than gold to you."
She drew herself away from him without answering—not in fear, but because her code of ethics, the repressive conventions of her whole existence urged her to do so in the face of a sudden yearning to draw his bloody face up close to her and kiss it. The very thought, the swift surge of the impulse frightened her, shocked her. She could not understand it, and so she took refuge behind the woman instinct to hold back, that strange feminine paradox which will deny and shrink from the dominant impulses of life. And Roaring Bill made no effort to hold her. He let her go, and fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe his glistening face. And presently he went over to where a little stream bubbled among the tree roots and washed his hands and face. Then he got a clean shirt out of his war bag and disappeared into the brush to change. When he came out he was himself again, if a bit sober in expression.