She sensed his eyes upon her, and looked up with the same open-faced showing of subservience and unthinking trust with which she had always looked to him before. Then her eyes fell, and she became as a downcast wretch, a hag before her time, weeping uncontrollably on the dirty cot before his compassionately kneeling figure.
Tears of shame fell from her closed eyelids, but she felt surprise as she felt Habrunt's strong hand placed gently upon her shoulder, and with his other hand, he held up the clay cup.
From the odor of it, she dimly perceived that it was simple herbal tea, and not a powerful potion such as she had delivered to the Physician earlier.
He placed it gently to her lips. From the feel of it's even warmth, she sensed that he had warmed it a little, though not enough to be too much for her. She let it's tasteless liquid slip through her feverish lips, and could not discern it, either as warmth nor coolness. It was neither sweet nor sour, and faintly but not unpleasantly bitter.
When she'd had a little, he removed the cup from her lips and set it down on the earthen floor, already forgotten in the dark shadows beneath the cot.
He remained frozen for a moment in the stillness of the deserted bungalow. She thought he must be angry at her, and deservedly so, but she saw no wrath in the quiet look of compassion with which he studied her. His eyes were steady and calm.
"Fear not, little one," said Habrunt, his voice a deep, soft reassurance to her. "No one shall pluck thee from my hand."
At this, her eyes lifted up to his in surprise, and she saw his forefinger raised vertically against his pursed lips, beneath cautiously furrowed masculine eyebrows, the universal gesture for silence and secret comradeliness.
He leaned forward towards her, and bent down, and kissed her gently on the forehead.
Eyelids shutting reflexively, she tingled all over, from her aching head to her tiny feet, at the soft touch of his lips. She quivered all inside at the furriness of his thick beard, and the brush of his long wavy locks where they fell from beneath his leather headband against her numbed face.