"Let me bandage the wound," she said eagerly. Her eyes were alight with
compassion, certainly not because it was the dissipated French invader,
M. Savary dit Detricand,--no one knew that he was the young Comte de
Tournay of the House of Vaufontaine, but because he was a wounded fellow-
creature. She would have done the same for the poor beganne, Dormy
Jamais, who still prowled the purlieus of St. Heliers.

It was clear, however, that Detricand felt differently. The moment she
touched him he became suddenly still. He permitted her to wash the blood
from his temple and forehead, to stanch it first with brandied jeru-
leaves, then with cobwebs, and afterwards to bind it with her own
kerchief.

Detricand thrilled at the touch of the warm, tremulous fingers. He had
never been quite so near her before. His face was not far from hers.
Now her breath fanned him. As he bent his head for the bandaging, he
could see the soft pulsing of her bosom, and hear the beating of her
heart. Her neck was so full and round and soft, and her voice--surely
he had never heard a voice so sweet and strong, a tone so well poised,
so resonantly pleasant.

When she had finished, he had an impulse to catch the hand as it dropped
away from his forehead, and kiss it; not as he had kissed many a hand,
hotly one hour and coldly the next, but with an unpurchasable kind of
gratitude characteristic of this especial sort of sinner. He was just
young enough, and there was still enough natural health in him, to know
the healing touch of a perfect decency, a pure truth of spirit. Yet he
had been drunk the night before, drunk with three noncommissioned
officers--and he a gentleman, in spite of all, as could be plainly seen.