Help me."
They carried the doctor to the banks of the stream and laid him on a
spread robe. He protested that it was nothing, it had happened before,
several times. Missy would remember it, last winter in Rochester? Her
answering smile was pitiable, a grimace of the lips that went no
farther. She felt its failure and turned away plucking at a weed near
her. Courant saw the trembling of her hand and the swallowing movement
of her throat, bared of its sheltering kerchief. She glanced up with a
stealthy side look, fearful that her moment of weakness was spied upon,
and saw him, the pity surging from his heart shining on his face like a
softening light. She shrank from it, and, as he made an involuntary
step toward her, warned him off with a quick gesture. He turned to the
camp and set furiously to work, his hands shaking as he drove in the
picket pins, his throat dry. He did not dare to look at her again.
The desire to snatch her in his arms, to hold her close till he crushed
her in a passion of protecting tenderness, made him fear to look at
her, to hear her voice, to let the air of her moving body touch him.
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