Will you get out ?" Mutely she did so, feeling curiously weak and unstrung.

He put his arm around her, and led her into the dim cottage garden.
They went up a tiled path to an open door from which the light of a single candle gleamed fitfully in the draught.

She stumbled at the doorstep, but he held her up.

He was almost carrying her.
As they entered, an old woman, bent and indescribably wrinkled, rose from her knees before a deep old-fashioned fireplace on the other side of the little kitchen, and came to meet them.

She had evidently just coaxed a dying fire back to life.
"Ah, poor dear," she said at sight of the girl's exhausted face.