He stared wildly round him, only just arriving at complete consciousness.
"Are you wounded?" he asked, laying his hand gently on the dark head.
"I--don't--know, Herr," and then she glided across the floor to her mattress.
He dressed himself and kindled a light. It now all appeared a confused nightmare.
Ah! but if she died, if he had killed her?
When he drew aside the curtain, he beheld her cowering and shivering in her corner, holding up the counterpane in her teeth. It was smeared with blood.
"For God's sake--show me. Where were you hit?" he cried.
She let the counterpane drop as far as her breast, and silently offered her naked shoulder for his inspection. Blood was streaming from it.
But the first glance satisfied him, the connoisseur in wounds, that it was a mere surface shot. It would heal of itself in a few days.
"Thank God! Thank God!"