Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her.  There was no one to lend her aid.  She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms about him.  Though Ste. Marie was tall, he was slightly built, by no means heavy, and the girl was very strong.  She found that she could carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her.  When she could go no farther she laid him down and crouched over him, waiting until her strength should return.  And this she did for a score of times; but each time the distance she went was shorter and her breathing came with deeper gasps and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible.  At the last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and reeling brain.  But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the terrace and into the house, and with a last desperate effort she had laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the lower hall.  Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long time.

When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering to himself under his breath.  With slow and painful steps she got across the room and pulled the bell-cord.  She remained there ringing until the old Justine, blinking and half-dressed, appeared with a candle in the doorway.  Coira told the woman to make lights, and then to bring water and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room up-stairs.  The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could move once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantelshelf.  Then Coira O’Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low couch, and knelt beside him, looking into his face.  The man stirred, and moved his head slowly.  Half-articulate words came from his lips, and she made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone—­only her name, over and over again.  She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.

The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels, and the bottle of aromatic salts.  The two of them washed that stain from Ste. Marie’s head, and found that he had received a severe bruise and that the flesh had been cut before and above the ear.

“Thank God,” the girl said, “it is only a flesh wound!  If it were a fracture he would be breathing in that horrible, loud way they always do.  He’s breathing naturally.  He has only been stunned.  You may go now,” she said.  “Only bring a glass and some drinking-water—­cold.”

So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned, and went away again, and the two were left together.  Coira held the salts-bottle to Ste. Marie’s nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his head away from it, but it brought him to his senses—­and doubtless to a good deal of pain.  Once when he could not escape the thing he broke into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and let him be.