He sat down on the edge of the bed, put an arm round her shaking body, and held the tumbler towards her.
"Drink it up," he said; and the Brundage woman noted how adroitly he avoided the hand that would have pushed away the glass.
"I don't want it. I want you. I'm safe with you."
"It's both or neither. Drink it slowly. I'll stay to the last drop," he said, smiling down at her as she had never seen him smile before.
She obeyed, looking up at him between the mouthfuls, with something like adoration in her eyes.
When only a quarter of the mixture was left in the glass, she spoke:
"You're good to me," she said.
"Of course," he answered, and she laid her head on his shoulder and slept at once.
So for a while he held her; and the watcher saw the strength and judgment with which, a little later, he lowered the head to the pillow so that the change of position never brought a quiver to the closed eyelids; and, feeling romance as never before, she let a man play sick-nurse to a maiden in bed without one censorious thought, and became dimly aware for a moment in her drab life that love and modesty, strength and beauty, safety and trust, spring to meet each other out of the hidden root of things.
Dick laid the coverlet over the girl's shoulders, and walked out of the room with a silence of which the woman achieved only an indifferent imitation.