Paul lay still for a moment listening to the rustle of her dress; and when it had gone out of hearing he rolled over, and with a shaking hand began to free himself of the remnant of his bonds. He had not, so far, had time to think of the imminent peril from which he had escaped. He had been near death. Death! What a grip at the heartstrings! He had had his second of terror in the fact, but the fact was nothing like the looking back on it There was no urgent fear now to compel him to the restraint of cowardice, and at this instant he was coward from scalp to sole—from heart to skin coward. The peril escaped was a thousand times more horrible than the peril endured, and he quailed now that the danger was over.
All his thoughts and half his feelings had hurried for weeks past towards prayer. In his extremity he had not prayed or thought of praying. A cool, self-centred, self-preserving something in his mind had taught him to command all his own forces for one purpose. Would he have been damned if he had lost the power to pray before that cunning mentor of the flesh deserted him?
He dressed lingeringly and feebly, and when he had done so he went back to the tangle of water-weeds he had left on the river-bank. There were a dozen of the lovely waxlike blooms amongst them, uninjured. He snipped them away with the scissors, and, climbing the stile with heavy feet, surrendered them to May.
‘Oh,’ she said shrilly, ‘take ‘em away! I couldn’t bear to look at ‘em!’
‘Take ‘em,’ said Paul. ‘They jolly nigh cost me my life.’
Before he answered (or before she caught the meaning of his answer) she had flung them into the roadway; but at the instant when she understood him she made a dart at them, gathered them all together in her hands, and sped to the brookside. There she lay at length upon the turf, and washed the blooms in the flowing water. Then she gathered long tough grasses, and looped them together until she had made a cord, with which she bound the waxen posy. Paul followed and sat near, languidly propped on one hand to watch her.
‘Paul Armstrong,’ said May, and he knew at once by this manner of address that she was going to be severe with him, ‘I’d no idea you was so wicked.’
‘Oh,’ Paul answered defensively, ‘I ain’t wicked—not over and above.’
‘You’re a very wicked boy indeed,’ she said. ‘You was in danger of your life—there’s no mistake about that, though at first I didn’t believe you.’
‘There’s nothing wicked in that,’ said Paul