"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 heart.
She said funnily, looking at the arrow sparkling in the gas light:
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