"You don't mean to say that you're standing there with a couple of bullets in you? Why, you're positively uncanny."
"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."
"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you afraid they'll kill you—turn green or something?"
"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs, the surgeon tells me. I'd forgotten all about them till you reminded me."
"And they never pain you?"
"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow of this sharp-shooter."
They were standing in the little temple, between them a little marble rascal with a bow and arrow. Persis put her hand to her heart. He mistook the gesture and asked, with sudden zest:
"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"
"I was thinking of you," she murmured, staring at him with wet eyes. "Wounded and bleeding, your flesh all torn, and the surgeons gouging in the wounds. Oh!"
She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before he could help her. He stared at her in bewildered unbelief. He understood that she was nearly aswoon because he had suffered once.