CHAPTER VI
THE ACCIDENT
SURPRISED I certainly was by this unexpected outburst. Scarcely realizing previously the indomitable spirit of the girl, before the sound of her mare's flying hoofs had ceased to echo along the hard road, I had given my roan the rein, and was spurring speedily after. I intended to keep within sound at least, nor would I desert her until she was safe in the care of friends. We were between the lines of two hostile armies, in a debatable country, where every possible form of danger might lurk, where bands of irresponsible guerillas, deserters, and fleeing conscripts, roamed unchecked by any authority, where no woman alone in the night could be considered safe for an instant. No fear of her threatening pistol kept me even thus far to the rear, but I sympathized with her, comprehended her outraged feelings, realizing how, in that moment of discovery, she must hate my very presence. And she was right; I had acted the part of a cur; I deserved to be cut by the lash of her tongue, even to be shot dead, if I dared so much as to touch her. Yet it hurt me, hurt me more than I had before supposed any denunciation by a woman possibly could, and I spurred forward grimly, with heart hotly pulsing. I was everything she said, yet it had not come home to me in full force, in all its
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