Don't be alarmed. Just let
me rest a minute. I'll be all right."

She closed her eyes again. Bob, watching, saw the colour gradually
flowing up under her skin, and was reassured.

The girl lay against his arm limply. At first he was concerned merely
with the supporting of the slight burden; careful to hold her as
comfortably as possible. Then the warmth of her body penetrated to his
arm. A new emotion invaded him, feeble in the beginning, but gaining
strength from instant to instant. It mounted his breast as a tide would
mount, until it had shortened his breath, set his heart to thumping
dully, choked his throat. He looked down at her with troubled eyes,
following the curve of her upturned face, the long line of her throat
exposed by the backward thrown position of her head, the swell of her
breast under the thin gown. The helplessness of the pose caught at Bob's
heart. For the first time Amy--the vivid, self-reliant, capable,
laughing Amy--appealed to him as a being demanding protection, as a
woman with a woman's instinctive craving for cherishing, as a delicious,
soft, feminine creature, calling forth the tendernesses of a man's
heart. In the normal world of everyday association this side of her had
never been revealed, never suspected; yet now, here, it rose up to throw
into insignificance all the other qualities of the girl he had known.
Bob spared a swift thought of gratitude to the chance that had revealed
to him this unguessed, intimate phase of womanhood.

And then the insight with which the significant moment had endowed him
leaped to the simple comprehension of another thought--that this
revelation of intimacy, of the woman-appeal lying unguessed beneath the
comradeship of everyday life, was after all only a matter of chance. It
had been revealed to him by the accident of a moment's faintness, by
which the conscious will of the girl had been driven back from the
defences. In a short time it would be over. She would resume her
ordinary demeanour, her ordinary interest, her ordinary bright,
cheerful, attractive, matter-of-fact, efficient self. Everything would
be as before. But--and here Bob's breath came quickest--in the great
goodness of the world lay another possibility; that sometime, at the
call of some one person, for that one and no other, this inner beautiful
soul of the feminine appeal would come forth freely, consciously,
willingly.

Amy opened her eyes, sat up, shook herself slightly, and laughed.