l safe enough here," he said, and went back to his
manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he
found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. "I wonder if any
one was hurt?" he said; "the road runs just below, of course. I wonder
whether there'll be any more of it--I wonder?" A wire jerked, the
cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang
to his feet. "Who on earth----" he said. "The house isn't safe after
all, perhaps, and they've come to tell me."

As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the
comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a
woman's hat.

He opened the door--it stuck as usual--but he got it open. There stood a
girl holding a bicycle.

"Oh!" she said, without looking at him, "I'm so sorry to trouble you--my
bicycle's run down--and I'm afraid it's a puncture, and could you let me
have some water, to find the hole--and if I might sit down a minute."

Her voice grew lower and lower.

He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took
two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs--there
were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat
pegs.

He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her
veil's white meshes.

He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back
against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.

"I'm afraid you're ill," he said gently. But the girl made no answer.
Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two
steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a
student of Greek could see that she had fainted.

"Oh Lord!" said he.

He got her hat and veil off--he never knew how, and he wondered
afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and
short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her
head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her forehead with
vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap,
at the foot of his staircase.

Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not
allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently
and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his
sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground--he had no sofa--and sat
beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the