He did all he could. He drew some chairs together before the fire, and made a couch for her with pillows and rugs. She thanked him with smiles, and her eyes followed his every movement.
"Tell your man to get some milk! And listen"—she caught his hand. "Lock my door. That nice woman down-stairs will come to look after me, and she'll think I'm asleep."
It was done as she wished. Ashe took in the milk from Dell's hands, and a fresh supply of wood. Then he turned the key in his own door and came back to her. She was lying quiet, and seemed revived.
"How cosey!" she said, with a childish pleasure, looking round her at the bare white walls and scoured boards warmed with the fire-light. The bitter tears swam in Ashe's eyes. He fell into a chair on the other side of the fire, and stared—seeing nothing—at the burning logs.
"You needn't suppose that I don't get people to look after me!" she went on, smiling at him again, one shadowy hand propping her cheek. And she prattled on about the kindness of the chambermaids at Vevey and Brieg, and how one of them had wanted to come with her as her maid. "Oh! I shall find one at Florence if I get there—or a nurse. But just for these few days I wanted to be free! In the winter there were so many people about—so many eyes! I just pined to cheat them—get quit of them. A maid would have bothered me to stay in bed and see doctors—and you know, William, with this illness of mine you're so restless!"
"Where were you going to?" he said, without looking up.
"Oh! to Italy somewhere—just to see some flowers again—and the sun. Only not to Venice!"
There was a silence, which she broke by a sudden cry as she drew him down to her.
"William! you know—I was coming home to you, when that man—found me."
"I know. If it had only been I who killed him!"