Every now and then, four or five times in an hour, she gave him whom she tended the soup or the wine that she kept warmed for him over the embers. He took it without knowledge, sunk half in lethargy, half in sleep; but it kept the life glowing in him which, without it, might have perished of cold and exhaustion as the chills and northerly wind of the evening succeeded to the heat of the day, and pierced through the canvas walls of the tent. It was very bitter; more keenly felt because of the previous burning of the sun. There was no cloak or covering to fling over him; she took off her blue cloth tunic and threw it across his chest, and, shivering despite herself, curled closer to the little fire.
She did not know why she did it—he was nothing to her—and yet she kept herself wide awake through the dark autumn night, lest he should sigh or stir and she not hear him.
“I have saved his life twice,” she thought, looking at him; “beware of the third time, they say!”
He moved restlessly, and she went to him. His face was flushed now; his breath came rapidly and shortly; there was some fever on him. The linen was displaced from his wounds; she dipped it again in water, and laid the cooled bands on them. “Ah, bah! If I were not unsexed enough for this, how would it be with you now?” she said in her teeth. He tossed wearily to and fro; detached words caught her ear as he muttered them.
“Let it be, let it be—he is welcome! How could I prove it at his cost? I saved him—I could do that. It was not much——”
She listened with intent anxiety to hear the other whispers ending the sentence, but they were stifled and broken.
“Tiens!” she murmured below her breath. “It is for some other he has ruined himself.”
She could not catch the words that followed. They were in an unknown language to her, for she knew nothing of English, and they poured fast and obscure from his lips as he moved in feverish unrest; the wine that had saved him from exhaustion inflaming his brain in his sleep. Now and then French phrases crossed the English ones; she leaned down to seize their meaning till her cheek was against his forehead, till her lips touched his hair; and at that half caress her heart beat, her face flushed, her mouth trembled with a too vivid joy, with an impulse, half fear and half longing, that had never so moved her before.
“If I had my birthright,” he muttered in her own tongue. “If I had it—would she look so cold then? She might love me—women used once. O God! if she had not looked on me, I had never known all I had lost!”
Cigarette started as if a knife had stabbed her, and sprang up from her rest beside him.