r she never could have exactly explained.
But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting
posture, and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on
one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it
in both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance of the
hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the door-way.

It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state
acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a
moment recognized her--continuing his rapid conversation to himself,
and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural
creature of the visionary world in which he was mentally living. The
undertaking occupied her more than ten minutes; but by that time, to
her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his
damp outer clothing removed.

Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There
was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his
thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to
be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet--erratic,
inapprehensible, untraceable.

Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she
firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she
knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair,
exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could I?"

Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now,
though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom
from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been
fully understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely
juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it
added something that was little short of reverence to the deep
affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of
Aphrodite in her constitution.

All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express
her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought
her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his
perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged
his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house
that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way
alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the
cause, of all this, interfuse