"I want only to touch--your hand." Shyly, she let him take both of her hands, and he lifted them in spite of her little show of resistance and kissed them.
"We might have saved ourselves farewells and journeyed together," he said blithely.
"But I thought you had gone back to Ephesus," she said.
"What! After you had told me you were going to Jerusalem?
No.

I have been nursing a knife wound in a sheep hovel in the hills since an hour after I saw you last." Her lips parted and her face grew grave, deeply compassionate and grieved.

If there remained any weakness in his frame before that moment, the spell of her pity enchanted him to strength again.

He found himself searching for words to describe his pain, that he might elicit more of that curative sweet.
"I was very near to death," he added seriously.
"What--what happened ?" she asked, noting the pallor on his face under the suffusion which his pleasure had made there.
"There was one more in the party than was needed; so my amiable companion reduced the number by stabbing me in the back," he explained.
There was instant silence.

Slowly she drew away from him.