, making it leap before all was blank;
for I knew that those words meant that, in spite of all my doubts, I was
loved.

"O Isaac!" she cried, in a wild frightened way, and then, as I said, all
was blank and dark for I don't know how long; but I seemed to wake up to
what was to me then like heaven, for my head was resting on Lizzy's
breast, and, half-mad with fear and grief, she was kissing my pale face
again and again.

"Try--try to forgive me for being so cruel, so unfeeling," she sobbed;
and then for a moment, as she saw me smile, she was about to fly out
again, fierce-like, at having betrayed herself, and let me know how she
loved me. Even in those few minutes I could read it all: how her
passionate little heart was fighting against discipline, and how angry
she was with herself; but I saw it all pass away directly, as she looked
down at my bleeding face, and eagerly asked me if I was very much hurt.

I tried to answer, but I could not; for the same deathly feeling of
sickness came on again, and I saw nothing.

I suppose, though, it only lasted a few minutes, for I woke like again
to hear a panting hard breathing, as of some one using great exertion,
and then I felt that I was being moved; but, for the life of me, for a
few moments I could not make it out, till I heard the faint buzz of
voices, when I found that Lizzy, the little fierce girl, who seemed to
be as nothing beside me, was actually, in her excitement, carrying me to
where she could get help, struggling along panting, a few feet at a
time, beneath my weight, and me too helpless and weak to say a word.

"Good heavens! look!" I heard some one say the next moment, and I think
it was Miss Ross; but it was some time before I came to myself again
enough to find that I was lying with a rolled-up cloak under my head,
and Lizzy bathing my lips from time to time, with what I afterwards
learned was her share of the water.

But what struck me most now was the way in which she was altered: her
sharp, angry way was gone, and she seemed to be changed into a soft
gentle woman, without a single flirty way or thought, but always ready
to flinch and shrink away until she saw how it troubled me, when she'd
creep back to kneel down by my side, and put her little hand in mine;
when, to make the same comparison again that I made before, I tell you
that there, in that besieged and ruined place, half-starved, choked with
thirst, and surrounded by a set of demons thirsting