CHAPTER IV WHICH, AMONG OTHER MATTERS, HAS TO DO WITH BRUISES AND BANDAGES
She was on her knees beside me, bathing my battered face, talking all the while in a soft voice that I thought wonderfully sweet to hear.
"Poor boy!" she was saying, over and over again, "poor boy!" And after she had said it, perhaps a dozen times, I opened my eyes and looked at her.
"Madam, I am twenty-five!" said I. Hereupon, sponge in hand, she drew back and looked at me.
A wonderful face—low-browed, deep-eyed, full-lipped. The eyes were dark and swiftly changeful, and there was a subtle witchery in the slanting shadow of their lashes.
"Twenty-five!" she repeated, "can it really be?"
"Why not, madam?"
"So very young?"
"Why—" I began, greatly taken aback. "Indeed, I—that is—"
But here she laughed and t
