We've talked about nothing while you must have been in pain." She shook her head as if his new solicitude irritated her, and a quiver of pain--or was it amusement ?--crossed her lips.

"It isn't the first time I've had to grit my teeth and bear things--but it's getting worse instead of better all the time, and I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to help me up the hill.

I was waiting until I thought I could manage it by myself." So that was why she had kept him! She had hoped all the time that she could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was impossible.

Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her.

By Jove, what pluck she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so lightly, it could mean only that her short life had been full of misadventures beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial.