Not until, after a slow, silent walk, they were seated on a bench in Our Square could she gather her resolution for the dreadful question. “Did you kill him?”
“Good Lord, no!”
Whirled her up out of a pit of blackness, and supported her through a reeling world.
“But—but—you shot him!”
“Yes, with this.” He thrust his hand in his pocket, and again, as she closed her eyes against the sight, she caught faintly the pungent stimulus that had revived her.
“What is it?”
“Ammonia-pop. Model of my own.” Her eyes flew open, the color flooded into her cheeks, but receded again. “He might have killed you!” she exclaimed. “I thought when you turned away and I saw the dagger that— Oh, how could you take such a desperate chance?”
“Just fool-in-the-head, I guess. I supposed he was through. Don't know that breed, you see. But for you, he'd have got me.”
“But for you,” she retorted, “I don't know what might have happened to me. How came you to be down in that slum?”
“Oh,” said he carelessly, “I prowl.”