Elsie was waiting at the top of the stairs, tense and white. Her eyes burned down into his with a singular flame as she cried out:
"Why didn't you come to me sooner? Why do you walk so slowly? Are you hurt? Tell me the truth!"
"No, only tired," he answered, as he reached her side.
She put out her hand and touched his breast. "You are; you are all bloody. Take off your coat; let me see!"
"No, it's not mine; it is poor Calvin's; he was badly wounded; he leaned against me."
"But I saw you standing in the pistol-fire; take it off, I say!" Her voice was almost frenziedly insistent.
He removed his coat in a daze of astonishment, and she cried out, triumphantly: "See! I was right; your shirt is soaked. You are wounded!"
"True enough!" he replied, looking down in surprise at a big stain on his shoulder. "I've been 'singed,' as Calvin calls it. It can't be serious, for I have not felt it."
A sudden faintness seized upon Elsie as she gazed fixedly upon the tell-tale stain. A gray whiteness passed over her face. "Oh, God! suppose you had been killed!" she whispered.
In that shuddering whisper was the expression of the girl's complete and final surrender, and Curtis did not question, did not speak; he took her in his arms to comfort her.