Grizel floated past into the forbidden room, her glance as easily avoiding his as her hands escaped his grasp. There was nothing curt or forbidding in the evasion, she seemed simply oblivious of anything but a friendly warmth of manner; engrossed in an interested survey of the study itself. Her eyes roved round the book-lined walls, and rested brightening upon the old-fashioned hearth. The fire was laid. In a basket on one side of the hearth reposed a pile of resined logs. A copper vase obviously contained coal. "Martin!" she cried eagerly, "let's light up! I've been perished all morning. Katrine says I'm unsuitably dressed. I am, but I never dress to suit rooms. I heat them to suit _me_! Would you think the room unbearably stuffy if we had a fire?" "Not a bit of it! I often do. Sitting at a desk is chilly work." He was already on his knees, posing logs scientifically over the paper and wood, balancing small pieces of coal on the top. In an incredibly short time a cheerful blaze was illuminating the room, and Grizel, kicking off small brown shoes, was crinkling her toes before the fire. Martin drew forward a second chair and seated himself beside her, in apparent forgetfulness of the papers scattered over the desk. "What a shame that you should be so chilled! Why haven't you had a fire downstairs?" "Katrine preferred exercise. She recommended a flannel shirt, and an expedition to buy cabbages. British and bracing. Can you imagine _me_, Martin, buying cabbages, in the rain, in a flannel shirt?" He looked at her; an eloquent glance. There were two feelings warring in his breast, indignation against his sister for her callousness and lack of consideration, and a rush of protective tenderness towards the sweet martyr so abused, for it is one of the injustices of life that the woman who smiles and looks beautiful will always take precedence in a man's heart over the assiduous purchaser of cabbages. For a moment sympathy engrossed Martin's mind, then he smiled; a somewhat difficult smile. "It is hardly your _metier_! Still, if it happened that you were in Katrine's position; if it came in your day's work--" "If the garden were properly managed you would not _need_ to buy cabbages! I'd dismiss the gardener!" pronounced Grizel briskly, and once again a dangerous moment had come, and gone. She cowered over the fire, holding out her hands, hitching her shoulders to her ears. Her nose was still red; if Katrine had been present she would have told herself that no man could possibly admire a woman with a red nose, but Martin had not so much as noticed the fact, and if he had, would have felt it to be a wonderful and beautiful thing that Grizel's nose could be red, like that of an ordinary mortal. It would have appeared to him the most endearing of traits.