Now, this witless speech was no better than a whip to flog him on.

"What things?" he questioned, promptly.

"Oh, many things. She spoke often of you."

"What did she say of me, Jack? Tell me what she said," he begged. "It
can make no difference now; she is less than nothing to me--nay,'tis
even worse than that, since she would play Delilah if she could. But oh,
Jack, I love her!--I should love her if I stood on the gallows and she
stood by to spring the drop and turn me off!"

Truly, if the lash of remorse had lacked its keenest thong, this
passionate outburst of his would have added it. None the less, I must
needs be weaker than water and fall back another step and put him off.

"Another time, Richard. I am strangely unnerved and dizzy-headed now. By
and by, when I am stronger, I will tell you all."

Taking a reproach where none was meant, he sprang up with a self-aimed
malison upon his lack of care for me, stirred the fire alive and brewed
me a most delicious-smelling cup of broth. And afterward, when I had
drunk the broth with some small beckonings of returning appetite, he
spread his coat to screen me from the fire light and would have driven
me to sleep again.

"At any rate, you shall not talk," he promised. "If you are wakeful I
will talk to you and tell you what little I have gleaned about the
fighting."