He shook the blood off his finger and bound it tightly round with the handkerchief.
“Oh, Lord Yorkshire, I’m so sorry,” said Helen again. “I am an absolute born idiot. How could I be such a fool?”
He laughed again.
“My dear Miss Challoner,” he said, “nothing whatever has happened which can justify your violent language. Besides, it would have been worth while to set that poor, jolly beast free at the cost of real pain, and not just a finger-scratch. Well, we’ve vindicated the liberty of one individual anyhow. Did you see its eyes? They said ‘I am I,’ like Magda.”
He held the bushes back for her to regain the path.
“But you’ll have your finger attended to?” she said.
“Yes, at once, please. I’ll ask you to tie it rather tighter, if you don’t mind the sight of blood. I always think blood is such a beautiful colour,” he chattered on, to prevent her apologising further. “One talks of a blood-red sunset and admires it, and dragon’s-blood china; but when it comes to the real article, so many people shrink from it. That’s better, thanks; that’s excellent. I assure you it is nothing at all.”
His manner was so entirely natural that there was nothing left for her except to be natural too; and they walked on out of the cool, green-shadowed path, flecked here and there with the sunshine that filtered through the trees that met above them, into the blaze and brightness of the fields that bordered the church-yard.
“Yes, the cry of Magda for her right to her own individuality,” he said. “At last this generation has said, ‘I will lead my own life, not the life dictated to me by other people.’ I wonder what we shall make of it.”
Helen looked at him again, eagerly.