A stinging sensation as she bathed the edges of the cut with the spirit brought him back to common sense again.

"There," she said, skillfully extemporizing a bandage from her handkerchief and a compress from his cravat.

"Now, button your coat over your chest, so, and don't take cold." She insisted upon buttoning it for him; greater even than the feminine delight in a man's strength is the ministration to his weakness.

Yet, when this was finished, she drew a little away from him in some embarrassment--an embarrassment she wondered at, as his skin was finer, his touch gentler, his clothes cleaner, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--he exhaled an atmosphere much sweeter than belonged to most of the men her boyish habits had brought her in contact with--not excepting her own father.

Later she even exempted her mother from the possession of this divine effluence.