"Let me go!" she cried instantly, even before she regained her balance.
"Certainly!" he said indignantly. "I beg your pardon." And he stood away from her. "I was only trying to keep you from falling."
"Good heavens, you don't need to explain that!" she exclaimed. "I didn't suppose you" She stopped, apparently because of embarrassment.
He was embarrassed, too, and not pleased that he should be so on account of little Miss Tinker. She was of his own height; but he thought of her as "little Miss Tinker" and thus she had sometimes been mentioned in his talks with Albert Jones and Macklyn. It angered him with himself that his savoir faire could be impaired by little Miss Tinker's first implying that he had caught her in his arms because he wished to, and then reproaching him for explaining that his motive was utilitarian.
"Good-night," he said stiffly; then lifted his cap and went on; but he had not gone far when he began to fear he had been rude to her; and the thought of her lovely, unhappy young face touched him. He knew her opinion of him, for he had heard her express it to her mother; but to-night, in his own unhappiness, he discovered that he forgave her for it.
