"For ... for what I 've done," said the girl unsteadily, each word tremulous with a tear. "I did n't mean—to disturb you. I ought to have spoken—when you called—first of all. But I could n't—somehow—and I never expected you—by the window. I thought—perhaps—the door. And I feel so mean—and miserable—and wretched...." Her voice suddenly went from her to an interminable distance, falling faintly afar like the unreal voice that wanders aimlessly about the slopes of slumber. "And oh, please—will you give me a glass of water?"
With that, and a residuary shaky sigh of her little store of breath left over, her head fell limply forward. There was no mistaking this last tell-tale token of physical extremity; and he was by her side in a moment.
"Hello!" he called on the way, encouraging her by voice to resolution, till he reached her, "what a great iron-shod beast I am, jumping out and scaring you in this fashion. Hold up a little. You 're not going to give up the ghost on my account, surely!"
She made a futile effort to move her lips for reply, and lifted her head in the supreme spurt of conscious endeavor, but it tumbled straightway across the other shoulder uncontrolled, and swung a helpless semi-circle before her breast. She would have been down after that, all the length of her, but that his arms were quick to intercept the fall. The shock of sudden succor checked her in her collapse.
"Thank you," she panted, in a voice that stifled its words, and striving, in a half-unconscious and wholly incompetent fashion, to free him of the necessity of her further support. "... I 'm better now."
Words came no more easily to her under recovery than under the original discovery, though he knew well enough that it was because her lips were overburdened with them, and through no poverty of desire.
"Better?" he echoed, transplanting her own convictionless admission into the pleasantest prospect possible. "Come, come! That 's gladdening. There! ... Do you think you can stand all right?"
He loosened the clasp of his arms for a moment, and she swayed out impotently in their widening circle.
"I think so," she said, giving desperate lie to proof positive under the strenuousness of desire.
He laughed indulgently, and caught her in again.