"I don't understand myself. But I'm certainly sorry you were there.… There's a beast in men—in me!… I had a gun in my pocket. But do you think I'd have used it?… I wanted to feel his flesh tear, his bones break, his blood spurt—"
"Kurt!"
"Yes!… That was the Hun in me!" he declared, in sudden bitter passion.
"Oh, my friend, do not talk so!" she cried. "You make me—Oh, there is no Hun in you!"
"Yes, that's what ails me!"
"There is not!" she flashed back, roused to passion. "You had been made desperate. You acted as any wronged man! You fought. He tried to kill you. I saw the gun. No one could blame you.… I had my own reason for begging dad to keep you from killing him—a selfish woman's reason!… But I tell you I was so furious—so wrought up—that if it had been any man but you—he should have killed him!"
"Lenore, you're beyond my understanding," replied Dorn, with emotion. "But I thank you—for excusing me—for standing up for me."
"It was nothing.…Oh, how you bleed!.… Doesn't that hurt?"
"I've no pain—no feeling at all—except a sort of dying down in me of what must have been hell."
They reached the house and went in. No one was there, which fact relieved Lenore.