"Who am I?" he queried, holding up her head while she drank from the tin cup he had now taken from his knapsack. "I? Oh, just an out-of-work. Nobody of any interest to you!"
A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. In health, he knew, a woman of this class would not suffer him even to touch her hand.
"Don't ask me who I am, please. And I—I won't ask your name. We're of different worlds, I guess. But for the moment, Fate has levelled the barriers. Just let it go at that. And now, if you can stay here, all right; perhaps I can hike back to the next house, below here, and telephone, and summon help."
"How far is it?" she asked, looking at him with wonder in her lovely eyes—wonder, and new thoughts, and a strange kind of longing to know more of this extraordinary man, so strong, so gentle, so unwilling to divulge himself or ask her name.
"How far?" he repeated. "Oh, four or five miles. I can make it in no time. And with luck, I can have an auto and a doctor here before dark. Well, does that suit you?"
"Don't go, please," she answered. "I—I may be still a little weak and foolish, but—somehow, I don't want to be left alone. I want to be kept from remembering, from thinking of those last, awful moments when the car was running away; when it struck the wall, at the turn; when I was thrown out, and—and knew no more. Don't go just yet," the girl entreated, covering her eyes with both hands, as though to shut out the horrible vision of the catastrophe.
"All right," Gabriel answered. "Just as you please. Only, if I stay, you must promise to stop thinking about the accident, and try to pull together."
"I promise," she agreed, looking at him with strange eyes. "Oh dear," she added, with feminine inconsequentiality, "my hair's all down, and Lord knows where the pins are!"
He smiled to himself as she managed, with the aid of such few hairpins as remained, to coil the coppery meshes once more round her head and even somewhat over the bandage, and secure them in place.
At sight of his face as he watched her, she too smiled wanly—the first time he had seen a real smile on her mouth.