  The drastic rise of the proton structure function F_2(x,Q^2) when the
Bj\"orken variable x decreases, seen at HERA for a large span of Q^2, negative
values for the 4-momentum transfer, may be damped when Q^2 increases beyond
several hundreds GeV^2. A new data analysis and a comparison with recent models
for the proton structure function is proposed to discuss this phenomenon in
terms of the derivative \partial ln F_2(x,Q^2)/\partial ln(1/x).
