He set his back against the heavy curtain, pushing it outward. Then he took her delicate body in his arms, lifted her over the threshold, and set her feet on the crimson carpet of the sombre and stately corridor without. The curtain swept back into its place across the door with a dull thud, which mingled ominously with the muttering thunder. Against the panes of the long range of windows the lightning peeped and flickered, as in malicious curiosity of that going forward within, while the Roman emperors looked on, supercilious, impassive, with sightless, marble eyes. His fairy-lady's delicate body had been light as a feather, so light that, lifting it, Laurence had trembled lest it should slip out of his encircling arms, as the little summer winds might slip should one strive to embrace them; and yet that same lifting of her had taxed every muscle in his frame, and set his heart thumping like a steam hammer. It was the very oddest sensation, suggesting that there was something very much more than a narrow piece of polished, oak flooring and deep, pile carpet to lift her across. He stood now, breathless, singularly shaken by the effort, notwithstanding his natural vigour and physical strength--shaken, yet triumphant. "There, my beloved," he cried, "there! It's not such a very dangerous experiment after all, you see, to go out at an open door!--And now you are redeemed from slavery, free to range the pleasant earth at will and accept all the glad chances of it." But she shrunk against him, trembling, all her pretty pride humbled, like that of a little child detected in a fault. Her countenance had become shy and wild, moreover, and clear reason had ceased to sit enthroned in her serious and lovely eyes. She looked now, as she had looked on the night he first found her flitting to and fro in the yellow parlour, searching, searching, vainly and hopelessly, for the lost key of the satin-wood escritoire. And Laurence, seeing her thus, was smitten with self-reproach and alarm. Was it possible that, along with the restoration of her body, had returned that alienation of mind from which--as he had learned from her own testimony, and from the well-authenticated tradition of Armstrong, the agent--she had formerly and so pitifully suffered? As more than once before, an immense compassion filled the young man; so that, coaxing her, and using tender and endearing names--such as even the wisest of lovers weakly decline upon at times--he half-led, half-carried her past the doorways of all those brightly-lighted, silent rooms, through the square hall--its flying staircase gleaming upward step above step--until finally the dining-room was reached.