With trembling hands she gathered a few splinters and thrust them in; she crouched before the gaunt, iron thing, as though she would hold it in her arms and warm it in her bosom. But the man, who had followed her, thrust her aside curtly enough. She watched him as he shaved a stick into delicate ribbons of wood—watched him as he coaxed them into flame. He tickled the appetite of the sullen, devouring thing in the stove with scraps of resinous bark and little twigs. Presently the fire laid hold on the larger logs, and fed upon them, hissing. He shut the door then, and turned to her.
She had lighted a lamp, and in the light stood looking at him, softly bright. Her eyes were stars of gratitude. She said at once: “My brother’s still living.”
She gestured towards the bunk. His eyes did not follow the gesture, or move from her pale face, as he said, abruptly: “You stay here with him. I’m goin’ to get you in some more wood.”
Her eyes flashed suddenly with tears. She said, brokenly: “You’re good. Oh, you’re a good man! While you’re—cuttin’ the wood, I’ll—thank God you came!”
He went out into the night without answering her.
He returned in half an hour, loaded mightily. Sitting on the end of her cot, she smiled at him, falteringly. She had been weeping.
He did not speak to her. Light-footed as a cat, he busied himself about the humming stove, then went forth again.
When he came back the second time, she was asleep.
Her face—very pale, very pure, fragile for one of her life and race—was rosed in the glow of the stove. Her hurt hands were curled within one another, like the hands of a child. Moving in his noiseless way, the man went again, and looked down at her.
His furred cowl had fallen back. His face also caught the light of the stove. Dark, keen, predatory, it was the face less of a man than of some embodied passion of hate or revenge, the face of an Ishmael, the face of Cain. It looked strange now, so little was it shaped or accustomed to the gentleness of expression it momentarily wore, as a breath blurs the gleam of steel. Light and silent as all his movements were, they showed no gentleness. But he seemed gentle when he lifted the end of one of Dorette’s dark plaits, which had fallen to the soiled floor, and laid it on the cot beside her just because he hesitated and was clumsy.