"Haven't I told you?" Suddenly she was aflame with passionate vehemence. "I was frightened; ready to run; keyed up to run! There came that shot, and you were hit; I thought you were killed! It flashed over me that I would be suspected and all evidence would point to me and I would be convicted of murder! Cowardly murder!... One does not think at such a time; there is only the rush of instinct and impulse. I was all ready to run; I had no time to think...." "But you had the revolver in your hand as you went through the window!" "Impulse and instinct, I tell you!" she cried. "Instinct to flee; and to snatch at the first weapon for protection, even though it was the weapon that had just shot you! I was a fool, maybe; and maybe by acting as I did I saved my own life!" He was looking up into her face queerly; she saw the savage gathering of his brows; with all his might he strove for clear vision and clear thought. With a new, terrible keenness, he fixed his eyes upon her; then he said deliberately: "Liar!" He saw the flash of her eyes, the angry set of her mouth; her hands were clinched now, and for a moment it was he who believed that he was to be struck full across the face. And thereupon his own eyes brightened; this girl did not speak like a liar; she did not carry herself like one; she had yet to show the first streak of yellow which is in the warp and woof of lying souls. But Lynette curbed her quick temper and said only: "You have no right to call me that; my word is as good as your word, Bruce Standing. Had I shot you I should not have waited for you to turn your back. One thing I did do for which I was sorry even while I did it, and ashamed; I laughed at you even while I sympathized with your anger against a man who, to be little and mean, could have your horse killed. And it was not at you that I laughed, after all ... there come times when I can't help laughing, though there is nothing to laugh at ... it was the shock, I think ... the incongruousness, to hear you...." She ended there, sparing him any further reference to his lisping of which he was so desperately ashamed; once more she began working at his collar.... And again there came into the blue eyes of Bruce Standing a flash as of blue fire, though he hid it from her; and a sudden great, utterly mysterious gladness blossomed magically. For, though he did not understand and though he would never rest until he did understand, yet already he began to believe that this girl with the fearless look spoke the truth! And this, because of the ring of her voice and the tip of her head, erect on its white throat, and the flash of her own eyes, as though the spirit of man and maid had struck fire, one from the other. "If you'll help me ..." said Lynette. "If you can sit a little bit forward?... Your shirt will have to be torn or cut; I can't get to your shoulder otherwise...."