"You are hurt!" he said.

"Yes," she said faintly, "but not much. Will you tell him to drive first
to Mile End Road?"

"I have told him. Can I do anything to stop the bleeding?"

He looked at her in despair. The handkerchief, and the delicate hand
itself that she was holding to her brow, were dabbled in blood.

"Have you a silk handkerchief to spare?" she asked him, smiling slightly
and suddenly through her pallor, as though at their common predicament.

By good fortune he had one. She took off her hat, and gave him a few
business-like directions. His fingers trembled as he tried to obey her;
but he had the practical sense that the small vicissitudes and hardships
of travel often develop in a man, and between them they adjusted a rough
but tolerable bandage.

Then she leant against the side of the cab, and he thought she would
have swooned. There was a pause, during which he watched the quivering
lines of the lips and nostrils and the pallor of the cheeks with a
feeling of dismay.

But she did not mean to faint, and little by little her will answered to
her call upon it. Presently she said, with eyes shut and brow contracted:

"I _trust_ the others are safe. Oh! what a failure--what a failure! I am
afraid I have done Aldous harm!"