The men struggled for control and, seized
by the contagion of their excitement, the doctor laid hold of a wheel.
It jerked him from his feet and flung him sprawling, stunned by the
impact, a thin trickle of blood issuing from his lips. The others saw
nothing, in the tumult did not hear Susan's cry. When they came back
the doctor was lying where he had fallen, and she was sitting beside
him wiping his lips with the kerchief she had torn from her neck. She
looked up at them and said:
"It's a hemorrhage."
Her face shocked them into an understanding of the gravity of the
accident. It was swept clean of its dauntless, rosy youth, had
stiffened into an unelastic skin surface, taut over rigid muscles. But
her eyes were loopholes through which anguish escaped. Bending them on
her father a hungry solicitude suffused them, too all-pervading to be
denied exit. Turned to the men an agonized questioning took its place.
It spoke to them like a cry, a cry of weakness, a cry for succor. It
was the first admission of their strength she had ever made, the first
look upon them which had said, "You are men, I am a woman.
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