His eyes rested on her hair, that lay like a crown on her bowed head.
Slowly she cut each letter. “Don’t look until I get through.”
The fine, sharp blade was doing its work well; there was just one more word. She made a slip and the keen point plunged through. “Oh, did that touch you?” Suddenly withdrawing it she saw the blood leap out and run down his boot leg. Her eyes opened wide; the despair in them was enough to move him.
“Oh, Mr. Glenn, what have I done to you?”
“It’s only a pin scratch; don’t think of it.” He tried to console and reassure her.
She began unwinding the soft mull tie she wore. “I know you’ll bleed to death if we can’t stop it.”
He had taken his boot off. With tender, trembling fingers she was binding the cloth to his leg, winding it around again and again, trying to wrap out the sight of the blood.
It was no use, in a second the red stain would radiate over the white surface.
“What shall I do! oh, forgive me, forgive me!”
She knelt down and pressed his knee in her arms and bent over it with tears, the incense of her love mingling with self-reproach. Her penitence was pathetic.