ed in a sigh. "The little joy that was in
me."

"He has tried to kill himself out there in the hall," I said. She put
back like a frightened child but she couldn't be dragged on as a child
can be.

I assured her that the man was no longer there but she only repeated, "I
can't get through the hall. I can't walk. I can't . . ."

"Well," I said, flinging the door open and seizing her suddenly in my
arms, "if you can't walk then you shall be carried," and I lifted her
from the ground so abruptly that she could not help catching me round the
neck as any child almost will do instinctively when you pick it up.

I ought really to have put those blue slippers in my pocket. One dropped
off at the bottom of the stairs as I was stepping over an
unpleasant-looking mess on the marble pavement, and the other was lost a
little way up the flight when, for some reason (perhaps from a sense of
insecurity), she began to struggle. Though I had an odd sense of being
engaged in a sort of nursery adventure she was no child to carry. I
could just do it. But not if she chose to struggle. I set her down
hastily and only supported her round the waist for the rest of the way.
My room, of course, was perfectly dark but I led her straight to the sofa
at once and let her fall on it. Then as if I had in sober truth rescued
her from an Alpine height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing
but lighting the gas and starting the fire. I didn't even pause to lock
my door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of
something deeper and more my own--of her existence itself--of a small
blue flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within her frozen
body. When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff and upright, with
her feet posed, hieratically on the carpet and her head emerging out of
the ample fur collar, such as a gem-like flower above the rim of a dark
vase. I tore the blankets and the pillows off my bed and piled them up
in readiness in a great heap on the floor near the couch. My reason for
this was that the room was large, too large for the fireplace, and the
couch was nearest to the fire. She gave no sign but one of her wistful
attempts at a smile. In a most business-like way I took the arrow out of
her hair and laid it on the centre table. The tawny mass fell loose at
once about her shoulders and made her look even more desolate than
before. But there was an invincible need of gaiety in her hea