his shoulder. “Get some of this quickly.”

She huddled close to him and together they let their cold bodies drink in the warm air. It tingled at 17 their fingers, smarted into their faces, and stung their chests.

17

“Nearer! Nearer!” he urged her. “Let it burn into you.”

Their garments sent out clouds of steam and sweated pools to the tiles at their feet; but still they bathed in the heat insatiably. He piled on wood until the flames crackled out of sight in the chimney and flared into the room. He took her by the shoulders and turned her round and round before it as one roasts a goose. He took her two hands and rubbed them briskly till they smarted; she laughed deliciously the while, and the color on her cheeks deepened. But in spite of all this they couldn’t get very far below the surface. He noticed the dripping fringe of her skirts and her water-logged shoes.

“This will never do,” he said. “You’ve got to get dry––clear to your bones. Somehow a woman doesn’t look right––wet. She gets so very wet––like a kitten. I’m going foraging now. You keep turning round and round.”

“Till I’m brown on the outside?”

“Till I come back and see if you’re done.”

She followed him with her eyes as he went out, and in less than five minutes she heard him calling for her. She hurried to the next room and found him bending over a tumbled heap of fluffy things which he had gingerly picked from the bureau drawers.

“Help yourself,” he commanded, with a wave of his hand.

18

“But––I oughtn’t to take these things!”

“My girl,” he answered in an even voice that seemed to steady her, “when it’s either these or pneumonia––it’s these. I’ll leave you the candle.”

“But you–––”

“I’ll find something.”

He went out. She stood bewildered in the midst of the dimly revealed luxury about her. The candle threw feeble rays into the dark corners of the big room, over the four-posted oak bed covered with its daintily monogrammed spread, over the heavy hangings at the windows, and the bright 

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