"Why am I spinning such stuff?" he asked himself impatiently.
Amy's note of course minimized her aid to him and magnified his aid to her.
All this was in accord with established form, but it was in still stronger
accord with her determination to idealize his share in the incident. His
arm _had_ grasped hers firmly--and she felt it yet. But when she went
on to say--not for the first time, nor for the second--how kind and
sympathetic he had been in supporting her chin against those slapping waves
when the shore had seemed so far away, he wondered whether he had really
done so. For a moment or two, possibly; but surely not as part of a
conscious, reasoned scheme to save.
"She was doing all right enough," he muttered in frowning protest.
Neither did he welcome Mrs. Phillips' tendency to make him a hero. She was
as willing as the girl herself to believe that he had kept Amy's chin above
water--not for a moment merely, but through most of the transit to shore.
He sat there uneasily, pressing his thumbs between his palms and his closed
fingers and drawing up his feet crampingly within their shoes; yet it
somewhat eased his tension to find that Medora Phillips was disposed to put
Amy into a subordinate place: Amy had been but a means to an end--her prime
merit consisted in having given him a chance to function.
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