"What is that on your wristband, Leopold?" she asked. "Have you hurt
yourself?"
The youth cast an indescribable look on his hand, but it was not
that which turned Helen so deadly sick: with her question had come
to her the ghastly suspicion that the blood she saw was not his, and
she felt guilty of an unpardonable, wicked wrong against him. But
she would never, never believe it! A sister suspect her only brother
of such a crime! Yet her arms dropped and let him go. She stepped
back a pace, and of themselves, as it were, her eyes went wandering
and questioning all over him, and saw that his clothes were torn and
soiled--stained--who could tell with what?
He stood for a moment still and submissive to their search, with
face downcast. Then, suddenly flashing his eyes on her, he said, in
a voice that seemed to force its way through earth that choked it
back,
"Helen, I am a murderer, and they are after me. They will be here
before daylight."
He dropped on his knees, and clasped hers.
"O sister! sister! save me, save me!" he cried in a voice of agony.
Helen stood without response, for to stand took all her strength.
How long she fought that horrible sickness, knowing that, if she
moved an inch, turned from it a moment, yielded a hair's-breadth, it
would throw her senseless on the floor, and the noise of her fall
would rouse the house, she never could even conjecture.
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