“You know it is not charity,” she blurted out. “It is unkind of you to say so. I hate to see you lying there, looking so ill. I—I—” She stopped short suddenly—pitfalls lay ahead that might engulf her.
“Let it be charity if it brings you nearer. I can’t afford pride any longer. Charity should bring you close beside my couch of suffering, laying your hand on my fevered brow, and all that stuff. You are not a very good district visitor, Paddy.” There was a taunt in his voice, and he saw that he was hurting her more and more, and because in some way it gave him pleasure, he drove the barbs in. “Don’t look so resentful. Do you feel you’ve been trapped here under false pretences? Did Gwen tell you I was dying or something? How wicked of her! And now you find I’ve only a smashed-up arm, and all that beautiful Christian spirit of pity is like to be wasted on an unworthy object. Well, the arm hurts pretty badly, if that is any help to you. They give me morphia now and then, but I wouldn’t have it to-day.”
But that was a little too much, and a flash of the old Paddy came back. “You have no right to speak to me like this,” she declared hotly; “it is ungenerous of you. I have done nothing to deserve it. Gwen told me that you were hurt, and that you wanted me; that was all.”
“And haven’t I wanted you for weeks and months!... Yet you only ran away. Paddy, why did you run away from Omeath! It wasn’t quite fair. You made me behave like a brute; and to mother. I’m expiating it in my mind every hour, but, thank heaven, a mother like mine always understands. I wrote afterward and told her how it happened. I’d have gone across if I hadn’t had this smash.” His voice changed suddenly, as with a quick, keen expression he leaned toward her and asked: “Paddy, why did you run away?... Why do you treat me like this, when you love me?”
Again the tell-tale colour flooded her face, and she could not meet his eyes; but pulling herself together quickly, she answered in a voice that had borrowed some of the taunt from his: “I thought you said it was just charity.”
He smiled as if the taunt pleased him. “It is certainly about the same temperature just now. But there, I won’t tease you any more. You were a dear thing to come. I’ll get you a cozy, inviting chair if I can, then perhaps you’ll stay.” He attempted to rise, but the effort brought on a sharp spasm that turned him faint, and Paddy sprang forward.
“Oh, you mustn’t move, you mustn’t move,” she cried. “Why did you try to?... Can I get you anything...!”
His rigid lips broke into the ghost of a smile, and a great tenderness came into his eyes. “Sit where I can see you, mavourneen; it is all the healing I need.”
Paddy pulled up a footstool, and sat beside him, and quietly began to run her fingers with a light touch up and down his uninjured arm. She had seen his mother do it, and knew he found it soothing. Thus for some time neither spoke, and gradually the drawn, blue look left his face. At last, from gazing into the fire, she looked up suddenly into his face, and found he was watching her intently.
“Mavourneen,” he said very quietly, “I suspected that you were beginning to care at Christmas. I know it now. What are you going to do about it?”