"A little. What is it, Jennie?"
"You're hurt bad—very bad."
"Through here," he said again, and touched his chest. His breath was hard. His garments were soaked with blood. His face was bluish-gray.
V
She looked into his soul the query of her own. Perhaps there was something not wholly unworthy in the bond between them, since now it enabled them to talk, one soul with the other, almost without words.... The great, secret, all-powerful, world current, interstellar, not international, the one great power—of love, as she once said—was theirs.... Yes, it was theirs, if only for a little while.
"They've killed me," he began after a time—"I tried to do something for them. He—Rawn—would have used it for himself. I didn't want to....
"Jennie," he said, after a time; "I beg pardon, Mrs. Rawn—I forgot—would you take the doll, the little rubber one on the table there, up to the baby? Poor little thing! Oh, well! ..."
He sighed. She quietly laid him back upon the couch. She heard the blood drip, drip, through and across the brocaded couch, falling at the edge of the silken rug, on the polished floor, eddying there; thickening there.