The front wheel, however,
made him heroic, going off at a tangent into a cloth-merchant's shop,
and precipitating a clash while he still clung to the reins. The door
flew open on the under side and Hilda fell through, grasping at the dust
of the road; while the driver, discovering that his seat was no longer
horizontal, entered suddenly upon sobriety, and clamoured with tears
that the cloth-merchant should restore his wheel--was he not a poor man?
Hilda, struggling with her hat-pins, felt her dress brushed by various
lean hands of the bazaar, and observed herself the central figure in yet
another situation. When she was in a condition to see, she saw Arnold
soothing the ponies; Amiruddin, before the possibility of vague police
complication, having slipped away. Stephen had believed the gharry
empty. The sight of her, in her disordered draperies, was a revelation
and a reproach.
[Footnote 4: Clerks.]
[Footnote 5: Small dealers.]
"Is it possible?" he exclaimed, and was beside her. "You are not hurt?"
"Only scraped, thanks. I am lucky to get off with this." She held up her
right palm, broadly abraded round the base, where her hand had struck
the road. Arnold took it delicately in his own thin fingers to examine
it; an infinity of contrast rested in the touch.
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