Very gently she loosened the injured man’s collar, and assisted him to an easier position, tending him with such solicitude that Matheson, watching her in surprised silence, was moved to a yet greater hatred of the man whose life her coming had spared. Could she be so completely dominated by racial antagonism as to be dead to every other consideration? It seemed to him that the tragedy of her mother’s life, the division between the Nels, who in every respect save their sense of right in allegiance to opposite causes, were fraternal in feeling, could not fail to have some effect on her. He could not understand her attitude of unrelenting enmity. Even allowing that from her point of view his country had done her people a real injury in the past, surely she must realise that in this struggle for right against tyranny, every country which spent its strength in the defence of the weaker nations was to be honoured for the sacrifices it was called upon to make? For any injustice Great Britain had been guilty of in the past she was making a splendid atonement.
While he pondered these things, dizzy from the effects of his wound and the recent struggle, Honor rose to her feet and confronted him with so kindly a look that he was led to believe that her solicitude for Holman went no deeper than a womanly compassion which any suffering would excite—which she might have shown towards himself had his condition seemed to call for sympathy. She had not observed that he was hurt. In the gathering dusk the blood that was soaking through his coat showed only as a dark stain which passed unremarked in the agitation of the moment.
“Go,” she said in a quiet voice, and lifted an arm and pointed towards the open doorway. “Your presence excites him. You have hurt him. What had he done to you that you should seek to kill him?”
“Honor!” he said, and hardly recognised his own voice, so hoarse and strange it sounded in the stillness. He made a step towards her, gazing hungrily into the beautiful, upraised face. “Honor!” he repeated dully.
He saw, without appreciating in his dazed condition the significance of the action, Holman groping upon the floor for his gun, saw him feel in his pocket for ammunition. He was aware that the man was loading the gun; but he paid no heed to that in the stress of emotion that gripped him in the presence of this girl whose power over him exceeded any other influence that had ever swayed him. He saw the blood warming the pale face while he gazed at it with such strained and eager intensity, and noticed the look of distressed embarrassment in her eyes, the sudden shrinking away before his approach. There was neither dislike nor distrust in her look, only a quick, unaccountable nervousness which he attributed to the unexpectedness of their meeting, with its tragic and ugly introduction.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said. “You didn’t come as a friend. You thought to do him an injury... I know... You hate him because of the letter I foolishly read to you. I made a mistake—but I thought I could trust you.”
“A damned Englishman is never to be trusted,” Holman’s voice broke in raspingly behind her. “He’d sell you all... Why couldn’t you blasted English keep out of this war?” he demanded aggressively. “It’s not your quarrel. You’ve come in for selfish ends, and you’ll get shot to pieces for interfering when you weren’t called up.”
Honor turned her head suddenly at a sound from his direction. Looking over her shoulder she saw the gun raised to his shoulder, his finger crooked round the trigger.
“Stand aside,” he commanded her roughly.
She swung round quickly and faced him, standing resolutely between him and the man he would have shot down before her eyes.