noise. Yet to the hair-trigger nerves of Andy the spurt and flare of the match was like the explosion of a gun. He lighted the lamp, turned down the wick, and replaced the chimney. Then he turned as though some one had shouted behind him. He whirled as he had whirled in the hall, crouching, and he found himself looking straight into the eyes of the girl as she sat up in bed.
Truly he did not see her face at first, but only the fear in it, parting her lips and widening her eyes. The glow of the lamp caught on her hair and turned it into a red-gold river of light that splashed on white shoulders, and then disappeared behind her. A moment before the room had been nothing—a part of the grayness of the dawn—but the lighting of the lamp had shut out the rest of the world, and all the mind, all the soul of Andy was cupped and poured against that tide of bronze light and against the face of the girl. She did not speak; her only movement was to drag up the coverlet of the bed and hold it against the base of her throat.
Andy drew off his hat and stood, crushing it against his breast. His hair, wild from the ride, became wilder as a morning wind drove through the window and made the flame jump in the throat of the lamp. Altogether he was a savage figure, and he saw the fear of him go into the face of the girl as plainly as though he stood in front of a mirror. And it hurt Andy like a bullet tearing through him.
He stepped a little closer; she winced against the back of the bed.
Then Andy came stock-still. "Do you know me?" he asked.
He watched her as she strove to speak, but if her lips stirred they made no sound. It tortured him to see her terror, and yet he would not have had her change. This.
