Dipping the piece of shawl into the warm water, he deftly moistened the dried blood on her brow and cheek, and washed it all away.  He cleansed her sullied hair, as well, and laid it back from the wound.

“Tell me if I hurt you, now,” he bade, gently as a woman.  “I’ve got to wash the cut itself.”

She answered nothing, but lay quite still.  And so, hardly wincing, she let him lave the jagged wound that stretched from her right temple up into the first tendrils of the glorious red-gold hair.

“H’m!” thought Gabriel, as he now observed the cut with close attention.  “I’m afraid there’ll have to be some stitches taken here!” But of this he said nothing.  All he told her was:  “Nothing to worry over.  You’ll be as good as new in a few days.  As a miracle, it’s some miracle!”

Having completed the cleansing of the cut, he fetched his knapsack and produced a clean handkerchief, which he folded and laid over the wound.  This pad he secured in place by a long bandage cut from the edge of the shawl and tied securely round her shapely head.

“There,” said he, surveying his improvisation with considerable satisfaction.  “Now you’ll do, till we can undertake the next thing.  Sorry I haven’t any brandy to give you, or anything of that sort.  The fact is, I don’t use it, and have none with me.  How do you feel, now?”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him with the ghost of a smile on her pale lips.

“Oh, much, much better, thank you!” she answered.  “I don’t need any brandy.  I’m—­awfully strong, really.  In a little while I’ll be all right.  Just give me a little more water, and—­and tell me—­who are you?”

“Who am I?” he queried, holding up her head while she drank from the tin cup he had now taken from his knapsack.  “I?  Oh, just an out-of-work.  Nobody of any interest to you!”

A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice.  In health, he knew, a woman of this class would not suffer him even to touch her hand.

“Don’t ask me who I am, please.  And I—­I won’t ask your name.  We’re of different worlds, I guess.  But for the moment, Fate has levelled the barriers.  Just let it go at that.  And now, if you can stay here, all right; perhaps I can hike back to the next house, below here, and telephone, and summon help.”

“How far is it?” she asked, looking at him with wonder in her lovely eyes—­wonder, and new thoughts, and a strange kind of longing to know more of this extraordinary man, so strong, so gentle, so unwilling to divulge himself or ask her name.

“How far?” he repeated.  “Oh, four or five miles.  I can make it in no time.  And with luck, I can have an auto and a doctor here before dark.  Well, does that suit you?”

“Don’t go, please,” she answered.  “I—­I may be still a little weak and foolish, but—­somehow, I don’t want to be left alone.  I want to be kept from remembering, from thinking of those last, awful moments when the car was running away; when it struck the wall, at the turn; when I was thrown out, and—­and knew no more.  Don’t go just yet,” the girl entreated, covering her eyes with both hands, as though to shut out the horrible vision of the catastrophe.