"Is he…?"
"Yes. He'll never trouble any of us again."
She shuddered in his arms.
Dave ached for her in every tortured nerve. He did not know, and it was not his place to ask, what price she had had to pay.
Presently she told him, not in words, without knowing what he was suffering for her. A ghost of a smile touched her eyes.
"I knew you would come. It's all right now."
His heart leaped. "Yes, it's all right, Joyce."
She recurred to her fears for him. "You're not … hiding any wounds from me? I saw you fall and lie there while he shot at you."
"He never touched me."
She disengaged herself from his arms and looked at him, wan, haggard, unshaven, eyes sunken, a tattered wretch scarred with burns.