"You must get dry," he said, taking his coat from her shoulders. "Everything depends on it."
She laughed almost merrily, as they stood side by side in the rising steam from their drying clothing.
"You must sit down, and put out your feet to the fire," he declared. "I'll make a seat for you." He brought some logs from the corner and made two heaps of them about five feet apart, and then raised one of the loose floor boards, and laid it across, thus forming a sort of bench. She smiled gratefully; sat down and put out her feet to the flames.
"You must take off your shoes and stockings and dry them," he said, with the firm confidence of a family doctor.
"Must!" She repeated the word to herself, and bit her lip; she made no motion to obey his wishes.
"Surely you are not offended at what I said," he went on, after a little silence. "It is a serious thing, you know. Dry feet at such a time as this are more important than a dry body."
"Oh, I don't mind!" she answered, and she bent down and began to fumble the strings of her shoes; but the water had drawn the knot tight and her fingers were benumbed with cold.
"You must permit me, Miss Rowland," Charles said, calmly. He sank on his knees before her and, without waiting for her consent, he skilfully loosened the knotted string and drew her shoe off. "Now the other, please."
She thrust it out, but rather reluctantly. "You have such a strange way about you!" she said, coldly. "That is, I mean—sometimes."
The string he was now working on seemed to be more tightly tied, and she heard him mutter something impatiently: "I don't want to cut it." (Surely he had not heard her last remark, she thought.)