At the instant this last seemed more important than all else.

It would require but a moment, and then I could go, confident the man's injury would be no additional barrier between us, would never cause her to suspect that I had attacked him wantonly, actuated by personal motives.

He might try to make her think so, if he were the kind I believed, his mind already suspicious of her interest in me.

Her very sympathy for his wounds would make her easily influenced; this natural sympathy must not be inflamed by doubt of my motives and the thought that I had deliberately sought the man's life.

It may have been two rods between the fence and the grape arbor, and I called to her softly..