"He won't be back till late. He asked me to stick around--in case you needed anything----"
But the girl shook her head: "I can't discuss dad's affairs with--with----"
"With a State Trooper," smiled Stormont. "That's all right, Eve. You don't have to."
There was a pause; Stormont stood beside the bed, looking down at her with his diffident, boyish smile. And the girl gazed back straight into his eyes--eyes she had so often looked into in her dreams.
"I'm to cook you an egg and bring you some pie," he remarked, still smiling.
"That was my inference. Do you feel very lame and sore?"
"You poor kid!... Would you let me look at them? I have a first-aid packet with me."
After a moment she nodded and turned her face on the pillow. He drew aside the cover a little, knelt down beside the bed.
Then he rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that still remained there.
From his first-aid packet he took a capsule, dissolved it, sterilized the torn skin, then bandaged both feet with a deliciously cool salve, and drew the sheets into place.
Eve had not stirred nor spoken. He washed and dried his hands and came back, drawing his chair nearer to the bedside.
"Sleep, if you feel like it," he said pleasantly.
As she made no sound or movement he bent over to see if she had already fallen asleep. And noticed that her flushed cheeks were wet with tears.
"Why shouldn't I be kind?" he said, amused and touched by the girl's emotion.
"I tried to shoot you once. That is why you ought to hate me."
He began to laugh: "Is _that_ what you're thinking about?"
"Nonsense. We're quits anyway. Do you remember what I did to _you_?"
He was thinking of the handcuffs. Then, in her vivid blush he read what she was thinking. And he remembered his lips on her palms.
He, too, now was blushing brilliantly at memory of that swift, sudden rush of romantic tenderness which this girl had witnessed that memorable day on Owl Marsh.
In the hot, uncomfortable silence, neither spoke. He seated himself after a while. And, after a while, she turned on her pillow part way toward him.
Somehow they both understood that it was friendship which had subtly filled the interval that separated them since that amazing day.