He opened the door—it stuck as usual—but he got it open. There stood a girl holding a bicycle.
“Oh!” she said, without looking at him, “I’m so sorry to trouble you—my bicycle’s run down—and I’m afraid it’s a puncture, and could you let me have some water, to find the hole—and if I might sit down a minute.”
Her voice grew lower and lower.
He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs—there were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat pegs.
He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her veil’s white meshes.
He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.
“I’m afraid you’re ill,” he said gently. But the girl made no answer. Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a student of Greek could see that she had fainted.
“Oh Lord!” said he.
He got her hat and veil off—he never knew how, and he wondered afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her forehead with vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap, at the foot of his staircase.
Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground—he had no sofa—and sat beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the Athenæum, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky—brandy he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats—lifted her head and held the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of carnation; she drank—choked—drank—he laid her head down and her eyes opened. They were large, clear grey eyes—very bewildered-looking just now—but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the face.