"I am glad to see you looking better," he said as he reached her. "I am afraid there isn't much more than a cupful left. I had to go nearly half a mile to get it, and it has been running out steadily all the way back."
He knelt down before her, deep concern on his sunburnt face. Reluctantly, out of sheer gratitude, she dipped her handkerchief in the tepid drain, and bathed her face and hands.
"I am so sorry to give you all this trouble," she murmured.
He smiled with raised brows.
"I think I ought to say that. You will never trust yourself to me again after this experience."
She looked at him with a guilty sense of duplicity.
"I—scarcely see how you were to blame for it," she said, rather faintly.
He surveyed her for a moment in silence. Then, "I hardly know how to break it to you," he said. "I am afraid the matter is rather more serious than you think."
She forced a smile. This delicate preparation was far more difficult to endure than the actual calamity to which it paved the way.
"Please don't treat me like a coward," she said. "I know I was foolish enough to faint, but it was not so much from fright as from the heat."