“You must never, never do such a thing again.”
He had nothing to say.
“Promise!” she cried, but her voice was less emphatic than she imagined.
“I won’t,” he said, and caught her arm.
“You—won’t! How can you say such a thing?”
“Because I like you. I have known you for years, though we never spoke to each other until yesterday.”
“Oh, dear! This is terrible! You frightened me so! I hope I didn’t hurt your poor arms?”
“The pain was awful,” he laughed.
The girl’s heart was beating so frantically that she could almost hear its pulsations. The white bandages on Martin’s wrists and hands aroused a tumult of emotion. The scene in the ghyll flashed before her eyes; she saw again the wild struggles of the snarling, tearing, biting animal, the boy’s cool daring and endurance until he crushed the raging thing’s life out of it and flung it away contemptuously.
An impulse came to her, and it was not to be repelled. She placed both hands on his shoulders and kissed him, quite fearlessly, on the lips.