“You brave woman!” he said, in a low tone—“You daring soul!—But—are you sure you are all right?—Can you stand alone?”
She drew away from his hold.
“Of course! Firm as a rock!”
He looked at her wonderingly,—almost with a kind of terror.
“Thank God!” he murmured—“thank God I have not killed you! If I had——!”
He dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
Still trembling a little as she was, she felt deeply touched by his evident emotion, and with that sudden, new and surprising sense of lightness and buoyancy upon her she ran to him and impulsively knelt down beside him.
“Don’t think of it, please!” she said, entreatingly, her always sweet voice striking a soothing note on the air—“Don’t worry! All is well! I’m as alive as I can be. If you had killed me I quite understand you would have been very sorry,—but it really wouldn’t have mattered—in the interests of science! The only trouble for you would have been to get rid of my body,—bodies are always such a nuisance! But with all your knowledge I daresay you could have ground me into a little heap of dust!” And she laughed, quite merrily. “Please don’t sit in such an attitude of despair!—you’re not half cold-hearted enough for a scientist!”
He raised his head and looked at her.
“That’s true!” he said, and smiled. “But—I wonder what has made you the strange woman you are? No fear of the unknown!—No hesitation, even when death might be the result of your daring,—surely there never was one of your sex like you!”