Sass 3.4.1 escapes "\ 270e" to "\\ 270e", which breaks the font icon

Question

In my Sass, I have a variable like this:

$icon-pencil: \270e; 

Then, later, I have this:

 i.icon-pencil:before { content: "#{$entypo-icon-pencil}"; height: inherit; } 

(Yes, I know that interpolation is not needed there. I actually have a function, but I simplify to simplify the task.)

This outputs this:

 i.icon-pencil:before { content: "\\270e"; height: inherit; } 

An additional slash allows you to simply display text instead of an HTML object (for example, a pencil icon).

Why is it running? What can I do to prevent this?

I found this comment , which seems to be my problem, but not sure where to go from here.