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Rh "I care not to be helped, to be pardoned, by one who stands to me as a foe! 'Twas the first time I'd had a check, the first time I'd been hurt. The others—my comrades—might look at me askance, I thought, might treat me as a mere woman, despise me, when once they found me hurt, wounded, like one of themselves."

"Still, you need not have let your feminine spitefulness carry you so far!"

"Feminine spitefulness!" echoed she; and she made a sudden, vain attempt to wrench her hands away. "Pshaw, you don't understand! And in truth I did you no hurt."

"'Twas the fault of your feminine arm!" retorted Tregenna. "The intention was bad; so, thank Heaven, was your aim!"

She clenched her teeth in rage and agony. Tregenna was interested, excited, in spite of himself, by this sudden revelation of the woman who looked upon herself as a sort of Joan of Arc, invulnerable, triumphant, bringing good fortune to her friends and ill luck to her enemies. He began to understand the movement of impotent rage which had caused her to behave so ungenerously. And he saw, too, that she now