round for
the fur coat; it seemed to me that there was not a moment to lose if she
was to be saved, as though we had been lost on an Arctic plain. I had to
put her arms into the sleeves, myself, one after another. They were
cold, lifeless, but flexible. Then I moved in front of her and buttoned
the thing close round her throat. To do that I had actually to raise her
chin with my finger, and it sank slowly down again. I buttoned all the
other buttons right down to the ground. It was a very long and splendid
fur. Before rising from my kneeling position I felt her feet. Mere ice.
The intimacy of this sort of attendance helped the growth of my
authority. "Lie down," I murmured, "I shall pile on you every blanket I
can find here," but she only shook her head.

Not even in the days when she ran "shrill as a cicada and thin as a
match" through the chill mists of her native mountains could she ever
have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very soul, her
grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted
traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But when I asked
her again to lie down she managed to answer me, "Not in this room." The
dumb spell was broken. She turned her head from side to side, but oh!
how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; and the
very diamonds on the arrow of gold sparkled like hoar frost in the light
of the one candle.

"Not in this room; not here," she protested, with that peculiar suavity
of tone which made her voice unforgettable, irresistible, no matter what
she said. "Not after all this! I couldn't close my eyes in this place.
It's full of corruption and ugliness all round, in me, too, everywhere
except in your heart, which has nothing to do where I breathe. And here
you may leave me. But wherever you go remember that I am not evil, I am
not evil."

I said: "I don't intend to leave you here. There is my room upstairs.
You have been in it before."

"Oh, you have heard of that," she whispered. The beginning of a wan
smile vanished from her lips.

"I also think you can't stay in this room; and, surely, you needn't
hesitate . . ."

"No. It doesn't matter now. He has killed me. Rita is dead."

While we exchanged these words I had retrieved the quilted, blue slippers
and had put them on her feet. She was very tractable. Then taking her
by the arm I led her towards the door.

"He has killed me," she repeat