At length in calm, level tones: "Why did you run away ?" he asked.
The question was to her anger as a gust of wind to a smouldering fire.
She threw back her head defiantly, and fixed him with a glance as fierce as his own.
"I will tell you," she cried, and suddenly stopped short.

The fire died from her eyes, and they grew wide in wonder--in fascinated wonder--to see a deep stain overspreading one side of his grey doublet, from the left shoulder downwards.

Her wonder turned to horror as she realized the nature of that stain and remembered that one of her men had fired upon him.
"You are wounded ?" she faltered.
A sickly smile came into his face, and seemed to accentuate its pallor.
He made a deprecatory gesture.

Then, as if in that gesture he had expended his last grain of strength, he swayed suddenly as he stood.
He made as if to reach a chair, but at the second step he stumbled, and without further warning he fell prone at her feet, his left hand upon his heart, his right outstretched straight from the shoulder.

The loss of blood he had sustained, following upon the fatigue and sleeplessness that had been his of late, had demanded its due from him, man of iron though he was.
Upon the instant her anger vanished.