"Dav--," she began, and shore the name of its tail.
In a moment he was by her side, standing on the bed of the channel and the water up to his thighs. The girl clung to him.
"I seem to have lost my nerve altogether," and she essayed a laugh unsuccessfully.
"You are tired, that's all."
"Yes, I am tired," she answered, "very tired."
And she leaned her weight upon him, resting her arm on his shoulders. Their muscular breadth renewed in her the feeling of protection, and she waited expectantly for him to propose again to carry her, or, better still, to just lift her up without a word and so spare her a repast of her own words. To all seeming, however, Gordon was waiting too. "He means the request to come from me," she thought. As a matter of fact, nothing was farther from his reflections. The experience of the past few hours had rendered the perfect control of his faculties impossible, and the shuttles in the loom of his mind, set at work by the touch of any chance suggestion, were weaving his thoughts in a grotesque inconsequence. The tension of her attitude recalled the pedestal on which he had perched her, as she said, to the undoing of them both. He had a vision of a pair of tiny feet, delicately shod in grey kid slippers, straining to fix high heels firmly on a smooth sloping surface.
Kate threw out a more patent suggestion.
"I am very tired, and this stone is not over restful."
"I was just thinking," he answered abstractedly, "it must be as awkward as my pedestal."
The unconscious sarcasm stung her to the quick.