Presently, he picked up her hand, the arm hanging a dead weight from her shoulder, the knuckles touching the floor. His fingers closed over the pulse to find it faintly beating. He had been a fool to let her stand there and watch the fight. He might have known. The thought thrust itself into his mind that he would like to meet the woman who could watch the whole thing out, take the lust of it as he did. She might be worth while. But this child--she was nothing more than a child--who fainted at the sight of blood; he felt a tenderness for her. Looking down at her as she lay on the settle before him, he could not conceive himself actually doing her harm. She had called him a gentleman. It seemed as if that stray phrase of hers had taken away all the sting of the desire. She expected him to act as a gentleman; then her expectations should be fulfilled to the letter. The woman who moved him to the deepest force of his nature, was she who knew the brute, not the gentleman in him, and bowed herself in supine submission. And as he stood and watched her there, slowly creeping back through the faintest tinges of colour to consciousness, he little imagined that Sally was the very woman who would so yield herself rather than lose him from her life. At last she opened her eyes, the dazed, wondering stare that comes after the period of forced unconsciousness. "Where--where am I?" she whispered. "Here--my rooms--you fainted." "Fainted? Why?" "I don't know;" he knelt down beside her, all tenderness and apology. "The fight, I suppose; we were looking on at that fight outside, at the back. I never thought--I was a brute--it never entered my head for a moment. Here, take a sip of this water, while I go and get you some brandy." He put the glass in her hand, laced her cold fingers round it, and hurried across to a cupboard in one of the oak cabinets. She was sipping the water bravely when he returned. He took the glass from her, emptied nearly all the contents away into the coal-scuttle--the first receptacle that came to his hand--and poured in the neat spirit. "Now drink a few sips of this," he said. She put it to her lips, then lowered her hand again. "You're really very kind to me," she said in gratitude. "Kind! Not a bit. Go on--drink it." She drank a little, obediently, and the points of light came back again into her eyes, the colour burnt once more with a little fevered glow in her cheeks. Then she sat up suddenly with the glass gripped tightly in her hand. "Oh, what a fool you must think I am," she exclaimed bitterly, "to make a scene like this, the very first evening that you bring me to your rooms. I am so sorry, so awfully sorry." He looked at her in wonder. "Great heavens!" he said. "There's nothing to be sorry about. If any one should be sorry, it ought to be myself. I let you in for it. I suppose it is a filthy sight, when you're not accustomed to it." "Yes, but you must think me so weak. And I'm not weak really; I'm very strong."