He knelt down and took her hand, but she shrank from him with a look of such concentrated terror that he allowed her fingers to slip slowly away.
"My poor dear girl!" he murmured, wiping the beads of perspiration from her brow. "My poor brave Cleo!"
Her teeth chattered a little, and again the frightened look entered her tired eyes, and she appeared to swoon once more.
He threw off his rain-coat and laid it on her, supported her head on his knee, and waited thus for some time.
After a little while, however, it occurred to him that someone might come across them if they remained so close to the house, and picking up his charge, he penetrated further into the wood in the direction of the morning's walk.
The movement seemed to restore Cleopatra a little, and laying her down on a gentle slope, he succeeded in making her sip a little brandy from his flask.
"You are breathing too quickly," he said. "You have just had a most terrific shaking and your head is agitated. Try breathing more slowly and deeply, as if nothing had happened; and soon your body will be persuaded that nothing has happened."
He spoke sternly, but with just that modicum of tenderness which made his words at once a command and an entreaty.
"Try it," he said again. "Breathe as if nothing had happened." He held her hand, and gazed sympathetically into her face. "As a matter of fact," he added, "so little has happened that it's not worth while being agitated about it."
She looked about as if in search of someone.