such a position, and begin to talk about “kissing the place,” young ladies, however independent of conventions, may well grow uneasy.
But the stranger, though alive, was evidently in a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little more at arm’s-length, and all at once the reaction from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” says Wade, vaguely, and still only half conscious. “I promise never to do so again.”
At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady smiled.
“Don’t scalp me,” Wade continued, in the same tone. “Squaws never scalp.”
He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead.
She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone and the new class he had placed her in.
Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade fully to himself. She perceived that his look was transferring her from the order of scalping squaws to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion, but blushing celestial rosy.
“Thank you,” said Wade. “I can sit up now without assistance.” And he regretted profoundly that good breeding obliged him to say so.
She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice, — posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an effort to be cool and distant as usual; but it would not do. This weak mighty man still interested
