Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/98

 the stern-sheets. Then she leaned over the side and wetted her handkerchief and laid it upon his bruised forehead. The cold water and the change of position brought him to himself.

He opened his eyes and looked up into her face as she bent over him. Then, all at once, he seemed to realize what had happened, and with an exclamation he tried to sit up. But she would not let him.

"Lie still a minute longer!" she said authoritatively. "You'll be all right in a little while."

"But it isn't anything, I assure you," he protested, looking about him in a dazed way. "Please let me sit up! I won't make a fool of myself again—it's only my heart, you know. It stops sometimes—it wasn't the knock."

"Your heart?" repeated Fanny, with greater anxiety than Lawrence might have expected. "You haven't got heart disease, have you?"

"Oh no—not so bad as that. It's all right now. It will begin to beat very hard presently—there—I can feel it—and then it will go on regularly again. It isn't anything. I fancy I smoke too much—or it's coffee—or something.