"Because I'm so minded, sir!" So saying she knelt close beside me and fell a-bathing my bruised face as she would (and I helpless to stay her) yet marvelling within me at the gentle touch of her soft hands and the tender pity in her tear-wet eyes. "Martin," says she, "as I do thus cherish your hurts, you shall one day, mayhap, cherish your enemy's—"
"Never!" says I. "You can know me not at all to think so."
"I know you better than you guess, Martin. You think it strange belike and unmaidenly in me that I should seek you thus, that your name should come so readily to my lip? But I have remembered the name 'Martin' for the sake of a boy, long years since, who found a little maid (she was just ten year old) found her lost and wandering in a wood, very woeful and frightened and forlorn. And this boy seemed very big and strong (he was just eleven, he said) and was armed with a bow and arrows 'to shoot outlaws.' And yet he was very gentle and kindly, laying by his weapons the better to comfort her sorrows and dry her tears. So he brought her to a cave he called his 'castle' and showed her a real sword he kept hidden there (albeit a very rusty one) and said he would be her knight, to do great things for her some day. Then he brought her safely home; and he told her his name was Martin and she said hers was Damaris—"
"Damaris!" said I, starting.
"Often after this they used to meet by a corner of the old park wall where he had made a place to go up and down by—for six months, I think, they played together daily, and once he fought a great, rough boy on her behalf, and when the boy had run away she bathed her champion's hurts in a little brook—bathed them with her scarf as thus I do yours. At last she was sent away to a school and the years passed, but she never forgot the name of Martin, though he forgot her quite ... but ... you ... you remember now, Martin—O, you remember now?" says she with a great sob.
"Aye, I remember now!" quoth I, hoarsely.
"It is for the sake of this boy, Martin, so brave, so strong, yet so very gentle and kindly—for him and all he might have been that I pray you forego your vengeance—I beseech you to here renounce it—"
"Never!" I cried, clenching my shackled hands. "But for my enemy this boy might now be as other men—'stead of outcast rogue and scarred galley-slave, he might have come to love and win love—to have known the joy of life and its fulness! Howbeit he must go his way, rogue and outcast to the end."
"No!" she cried, "No! The wrong may be undone—must—shall be—wounds will heal and even scars will fade with time."
"Scars of the body, aye—belike!" said I, "But there be scars of the mind, wounds of the soul shall never heal—so shall my just vengeance sleep not nor die whiles I have life!"