She had seen the swift hands remove the bandages and she had seen the cleansing solution applied.

She knew what it was; it stung even the unscratched skin, and to a wound it must be torture, but the wolf lay and endured--not even shuddering at the pain.
It had seemed to her that this was the great test.

If she could make the wolf lie like this for her, then, truly, she might feel herself in some measure admitted to that mystic fellowship of the three--the man, the stallion, and the wolf.

If she could, with her own unaided hands, remove the bandages and apply that solution, then she could know many things, and she could feel that she was nearer to Whistling Dan than ever before.
So she had come, time and again, with the basin and the roll of cloth in her arm, and she had approached with infinite patience, step by step, and then inch by inch.

Once it had taken a whole hour for her to come within a yard of the beast.