"It was only a flesh-wound," said Gaunt, in his vague way,—"deep, though. I knew how to bind it. He'll live, Douglas will."
He did not seem surprised to see the girl. Nothing could be so bizarre in the world, that his cloudy, crotchety brain did not accept it, and make a commonplace matter out of it. It never occurred to him to wonder how she came there. He stood with folded arms, his bony shoulders bolstering up the board wall, watching her as she knelt, her hands on Palmer's pillow, but not touching him. Gaunt's lean face had a pitiful look, sometimes,—the look of the child he was in his heart,—hungry, wistful, as though he sought for something, which you might have, perhaps. He looked at Dode,—the child of the man that he had killed. She did not know that. When she came in, he thought of shaking hands with her, as he used to do. That could never be again,—never. The man that he had killed? Whatever that meant to him, his artist eye took keen note of Dode, as she knelt there, in spite of remorse or pain below: how her noble, delicate head rose from the coarse blue drapery, the dark rings of her curling hair, the pale, clear-cut face, the burning lips, the eyes whose earthly soul was for the man who lay there. He knew that, yet he never loved her so fiercely as now,—now, when her father's blood lay between them.
"Did you find him?" she asked, without looking up. "I ought to have done it. I wish I had done that. I wish I had given him his life. It was my right."
One would think she was talking in her sleep.
"Why was it your right?" he asked, quietly.
"Because I loved him."
Gaunt raised his hand to his head suddenly.
"Did you, Dode? I had a better right than that. Because I hated him."
"He never harmed you, David Gaunt,"—with as proud composure as that with which a Roman wife would defend her lord.
"I saved his life. Dode, I'm trying to do right: God knows I am. But I hated him; he took from me the only thing that would have loved me."