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. She could
"play the game" so perfectly, he grasped, because she had been obliged
either to play it or go under ever since she had been big enough to read
the cards in her hand. To be "a good sport" was perhaps the best lesson
that the world had yet taught her. Though she could not be, he decided,
more than eighteen, she had acquired already the gay bravado of the
experienced gambler with life.

"Let me help you," he said eagerly, "I am sure that I can carry you, you
are so small. If you will only let me throw away this confounded bird, I
can manage it easily."

"No, give it to me. It would die of cold if we left it." She stretched
out her hand, and in silence he gave her the wounded pigeon. Her
tenderness for the bird, conflicting as it did with his earlier