“So you pity yourself?” she said.

“By no means!  We all choose the part in life that amuses us—­that brings us most thrill.  I get most thrill out of throwing myself into the workmen’s war—­much more than I could ever get, you will admit, out of dancing attendance on my very respectable cousins.  My mother taught me to see everything dramatically.  We have no drama in England at the present moment worth a cent; so I amuse myself with this great tragi-comedy of the working-class movement.  It stirs, pricks, interests me, from morning till night.  I feel the great rough elemental passions in it, and it delights me to know that every day brings us nearer to some great outburst, to scenes and struggles at any rate that will make us all look alive.  I am like a child with the best of its cake to come, but with plenty in hand already.  Ah!—­stay still a moment, Miss Boyce!”

To her amazement he stooped suddenly towards her; and she, looking down, saw that a corner of her light, black dress, which had been overhanging the low stone fender, was in flames, and that he was putting it out with his hands.  She made a movement to rise, alarmed lest the flames should leap to her face—­her hair.  But he, releasing one hand for an instant from its task of twisting and rolling the skirt upon itself, held her heavily down.

“Don’t move; I will have it out in a moment.  You won’t be burnt.”

And in a second more she was looking at a ragged brown hole in her dress; and at him, standing, smiling, before the fire, and wrapping a handkerchief round some of the fingers of his left hand.

“You have burnt yourself, Mr. Wharton?”

“A little.”

“I will go and get something—­what would you like?”

“A little olive oil if you have some, and a bit of lint—­but don’t trouble yourself.”

She flew to find her mother’s maid, calling and searching on her way for Mrs. Boyce herself, but in vain.  Mrs. Boyce had disappeared after breakfast, and was probably helping her husband to dress.

In a minute or so Marcella ran downstairs again, bearing various medicaments.  She sped to the Stone Parlour, her cheek and eye glowing.

“Let me do it for you.”

“If you please,” said Wharton, meekly.

She did her best, but she was not skilful with her fingers, and this close contact with him somehow excited her.

“There,” she said, laughing and releasing him.  “Of course, if I were a work-girl I should have done it better.  They are not going to be very bad, I think.”

“What, the burns?  Oh, no!  They will have recovered, I am afraid, long before your dress.”

“Oh, my dress! yes, it is deplorable.  I will go and change it.”

She turned to go, but she lingered instead, and said with an odd, introductory laugh: 

“I believe you saved my life!”

“Well, I am glad I was here.  You might have lost self-possession—­even you might, you know!—­and then it would have been serious.”