And just as he was making himself reasons, in a mechanical way, while he put the room in order, there was a knock, quick, imperative, the door was thrown open and there she was. She was about to shut the door, but he ran before her. He did it and turned the key. Then he passed her and hurried to the fire and with both hands heaped on cones and kindling until it flared. While he did this she stood as still as a stone and when, having his fire, he turned to her, he saw she had nothing on her head and that the fine snow had drifted into the folds of her clothing and was melting on her hair. She looked more wildly disordered than when he had seen her before, for she had wrapped a blanket about her, and the child was under it, covered so closely that Raven wondered how he could breathe. He tried to take the blanket from her, but she held it desperately. It seemed as if, in unreasoning apprehension, she dared not let the child be seen. But he laid his hand on hers, saying, "Please!" authoritatively, and she let him unclasp the tense fingers, remove the blanket, and then take the child. Raven had had no experience with babies, but this one he took, in the heat of his compassion, with no doubt that he should know what to do with him. He felt the little feet and hands and, finding them warm, drew forward an arm-chair for her, and, when she sank into it, set the child in her lap.
"Put your feet to the fire," he said. "Your shoes are all snow. Better take them off."
She shook her head. She stretched her feet almost into the blaze and the steam rose from them. Raven went to the cupboard at the side of the fireplace and took down a bottle of chartreuse. But she shook her head.
"I dassent," she said. "He'll smell it."
Raven came near breaking into an oath. Did the beast own her, that he should be able, after this new outrage, to get her sweet breath?
"I ain't cold," she assured him, "not now. No, I won't drink any"—for he was about to pour it for her—"I never took much stock in them things. I've seen too much of 'em."
Then Raven remembered that Charlotte had told him all the boys drank—her brothers—and he seemed to have turned another page in her piteous life. He set back the bottle and, to give her time to recover herself, resumed his task of straightening the room. At her voice, he was at once beside her.
"Should you just as soon," she asked quietly, as if the question were of no moment, "I'd stay up here all night?"
"Of course you're to stay all night." It seemed to him too beautiful a thing to have happened, to know she was here in safety with the trees and the snow. "I'll go down and get some milk and things for him"—he was indicating the baby who, under the ecstasy of warmth, was beginning to talk strange matters, standing on his mother's knee—"I'll tell Charlotte I'm staying up here all night."
But now he saw, in surprise (for he had failed to guess how his words would strike her) that she was terrified, perhaps more by him than she had been by Tenney.