She spoke with difficulty, with anguish, with a curious intensity. "It is you who will not listen," she said, "who have settled that we are to be ... as we are. I am perfectly miserable."
She stopped abruptly. If she died for it, Felix should not see her cry.
He knelt before her, the broken coin in his hand. "I am a brute," he said. "Oh, what a brute I am! And you are in pain! Forgive me!"
He hastily replaced the little token, fastened her purse, and handed it to her.
"Let me help you up," he said, stooping over her, with a voice most different from the hard, flippant tones he had used hitherto.
She looked up bravely. "I am——" she began, but broke off. She was not feeling well enough to have things out with him. "Yes, I fear I must hold on to you," she admitted. She grasped his arm with both hands, and so drew herself slowly to her feet.
"I can walk," she said firmly, "if I may hold on tight."
"As tight as you like," he replied. "Shall I—might I—carry you?"
"I don't think I could bear it," she replied, and then, seeing a double meaning in her own words, "I mean"—hastily—"that I have hurt myself, and could not bear to be touched."
"I would touch you gently."