was holding his right hand behind his back and reached out for the large parcel. The girl turned pale and recoiled. “You are wounded,” she burst out. “Show me!” Prokop hastily hid his hand again. “It’s nothing,” he assured her quickly; “I just got a slight . . . slight wound.”
The girl, quite pale, drew in her breath sharply as if she herself felt the pain. “Why don’t you go to a doctor?” she said abruptly. “You mustn’t travel anywhere! I . . . I will send somebody else!”
“It’s healing already,” said Prokop, as if something precious were being taken away from him. “Really it’s almost . . . right again, only a scratch, and anyway what nonsense! Why shouldn’t I go? And then, in such matters . . . you can’t very well send a stranger. Really it doesn’t even pain me,—look!” And he shook his right hand.
The girl made a movement of sympathy which was yet severe. “You mustn’t go! Why didn’t you tell me? I. . . . don’t allow it! I don’t want”
Prokop became extremely unhappy. “Look here,” he said hotly, “it really is nothing; I am used to such things. Look here,” and he showed her his left hand, almost the whole of the little finger of which was missing, while another had a twisted scar on the joint. “That’s the sort of occupation I have, you see?” He did not even notice that the girl shrank away from him with pale lips and was looking at a deep scar on his forehead stretching from the eyes to the hair. “There’s an explosion and there you are. Like a soldier, I get up and run off as fast as I can, you understand? Nothing can
