So absorbed were they in their own tense feelings that they failed to hear the opening and shutting of the front door, which was left unlatched during the day for just such unconventional calls as the one Mrs. Parr now happened to make. The first intimation they had of interruption was her shrill and terror-stricken cry: "Felicity! Felicity! Your maid is here in the hall—dead!"
Emmet reached Lena's side first. He raised her in his arms and carried her into the room he had just left, where he laid her gently on a couch. Felicity had already run upstairs for brandy and smelling-salts. Emmet, standing over Lena in guilty solicitude, addressed Mrs. Parr.
"Open the window," he said brusquely, "and give her some air."
She obeyed without question, and Felicity, returning with restoratives, found her husband hovering over her maid with tell-tale anxiety written on every feature, while her friend stood at the window looking on in curious conjecture. Together they bent over the girl's white face and moistened her lips with brandy. Presently, Lena's eyelids fluttered and trembled open. The mayor lifted her once more, as if she were a child, and stood erect.
"I 'll carry her to her room," he said to Felicity, "if you 'll show me the way."
"It's two flights of stairs," she objected. "Perhaps she had better stay here for a while."
"She's as light as a feather, poor girl," he returned. "She 's nothing for me to carry."
"You forget, Felicity," Mrs. Parr put in, with double meaning, "that Mr. Emmet is an athlete."
Without further protest, Felicity led the way upstairs, and Emmet followed with his burden. It was inevitable that the gentle clinging of those arms about his neck, the pressure of her golden head, should melt his heart like wax and make temporary havoc of his resolution. Impulsively he bent his face until it rested a moment in her hair. Circumstances had thrown them together once more in their natural relationship, both of them scorned, each needing and understanding the other in a peculiar way. No bold claims or passionate protests could have won the tender consideration her patient suffering drew from him.
Felicity opened the door, and stood aside to let him pass. He laid Lena carefully on her little bed and arranged her pillow, then turned toward the door. It was still open, though his wife no longer stood there, and he heard the diminishing rustle of her skirts. He stood looking first at the door and then back again at the bed, irresolutely. Lena opened her eyes and smiled at him with ineffable sweetness, and the temptation was overpowering. He took one noiseless step and sank upon his knees beside her.