Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/204

 With one arm Krylenko wiped the blood from his eyes.

"Then you don't know me," he said weakly. "I am not a thief . . . breaking in."

The little revolver Lily placed beside him on the chest. "I know you," she said. "I have seen you . . . you are Krylenko." She placed one arm beneath his. "Come," she said, "this is no place for you. There is a divan in the . Come and lie down there. I'll fetch some whiskey."

With an air of great weariness the man managed to gain his feet and, leaning upon her, he made his way preceded by the little circle of white light from Lily's torch across the polished floor into the drawing-room. Lily was tall but Krylenko towered above her like a giant.

She made him comfortable, piling the brocade pillows carelessly beneath his bloody head. Then she went out and as she left, there rose behind her the sound of a heart breaking sigh, like the cry of a defeated, sobbing child.

After a little while she returned bearing a white basin filled with water, a pair of linen pillow cases and a small silver flask. Presently he sat up.

It was the first time she had seen him since that afternoon in the Mill shed when Willie Harrison, fumbling with the ruby clasp of his watch chain, proposed to her for the last time. He had changed. He was older. Experience had traced its record in the fine lines about his eyes and mouth. The crudeness of the massive head had likewise undergone a change, giving place to a more certain modeling and a new dignity. Where there had once been a certain shapelessness of feature, there was now a firmness of line, a determination in the fine mouth, the strong nose and the high massive forehead.

Lily, tearing the linen pillow cases into long strips, watched him narrowly.

The wavy blond hair, where it was not stained with blood, chung against the damp forehead. Where the coat was torn and the dark flannel shirt ripped from the throat, the powerful muscles of the arm and shoulder lay exposed. The fair skin was as white as Lily's own soft body. The man's whole figure carried an air of freedom, of a certain fierce desire to burst through the shabby, stained clothing.