When Zelik recovered from the blow, he felt a sharp pain in his back, and remembered that the stork had picked at him. Rachel, when she saw blood on his coat, put her hands to her head. “O, mama, blood.” She again dropped to her knees before Zelik and began to entreat. “Zelik, my dear, come to us. Braina will put something on it. She won’t tell anybody. You’ll see. I beg you, Zelik, come.” She kissed him and began to cry again. “It’s all my fault.” Zelik, seeing her cry, became really frightened. He forgot his pain, and stood up. “Come, Rachel. We’ll go down to the water. You’ll wash off the blood. All right? Don’t cry. It’s nothing. I have had bigger holes in my head and they healed.” “Are you mad at me, Zelik?” “No.” “You want us to be friends forever?” “Of course.” “See, I love you so much,” Rachel said, and bit hard into the flesh of the arm above the elbow. All her teeth left red marks on the skin. They were silent. They walked over the dry branches that cracked under their feet, in the direction of the River. Rachel, like a little mother, began to attend on Zelik. She took off his coat, then his shirt, forgetting that a girl must not look on a naked boy. She took her white apron, dipped it into the cold water, and washed Zelik’s wound. Zelik lay on his stomach like a little wounded animal. He did not move. He was happy to know that Rachel was busy about him. When she had washed the wound, she removed the stains from the apron, wrung it out, put it on the wound, went with him into the bushes in the shade, and told him to lie down with his face in her lap, so that the wound should dry a little. Zelik obeyed. He fell asleep almost at once. At short intervals Rachel lifted the apron, and looked to see if the wound had dried. But the wound still ran blood. Her heart overflowed with sorrow, and she began to weep quietly. And thus, weeping with red, brimming eyes, Rachel nestled her little head among the leaves, and also fell asleep. IV The she-stork did not leave her nest the whole morning. She watched how her young pecked their way out of the shells. The he-stork was upset. He flew about the nest uttering strange cries, every now and then fetching something to his mate, strutting swiftly above the nest with a shrunken neck almost hidden beneath his wings. He resembled a young man whose wife is giving birth to her first child. The she-bird emitted a strange “Clia-clia.” The he-bird sat down, spread his wings, and guarded the nest. For a moment he seemed to be confused and looked at his mate who had lowered her head in shame as if she were saying, “I swear I am not guilty.” A little gosling rolled out of a broken egg-shell. The he-stork felt that all in him was trembling, and like a cuckold husband he threw himself at this mate, pecking her feathers with his beak. She lowered her head still more, moved closer to him and like a really guilty one, made no resistance. All in her seemed to say, “Go on beating me.”