Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin--the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair.
...

Amory knew that afterward Alec would secretly hate him for having done so much for him....
...

All this was flung before Amory like an opened scroll, while ulterior to him and speculating upon him were those two breathless, listening forces: the gossamer aura that hung over and about the girl and that familiar thing by the window.
Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious.
_Weep not for me but for thy children._ That--thought Amory--would be somehow the way God would talk to me.
Amory felt a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in a motion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadow by the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for the fraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly out of the room.

He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement...

the ten seconds were up....
"Do what I say, Alec--do what I say.