“It never has yet, which of course is not to say it never will—as you were about to remark,” she laughed back. “Well, I’ll come up.”
“Yes do,” he said, bending over the brow of the grass-roll as though to help her. But she needed no help. She sprang up, lithe, agile as a cat, and in a moment was beside him.
“Would you like to try it?” she said eagerly, as if the feat was the most ordinary one in the world. “Would you like to look over Sipazi? I can tell you it’s worth it. It feels like flying. But don’t if you think you can’t,” she added, quick to take in the not to be concealed momentary hesitation.
That challenge settled it; yet the words were not meant as a challenge at all, but as sheer practical warning. She would not have thought an atom the worse of him if he had laughingly declined, but Elvesdon did not know this. Was he going to shrink from a feat which a girl could perform—had often performed? Not he.
“Yes. I think I should,” he answered. “I should like to be able to brag of having looked over Sipazi.”
Yet as he let himself down over the grass and root-hung brow which led to the actual brink, he owned to himself that by no possibility could he ever tell a bigger he, and further, that at that moment he would cheerfully have forfeited a year’s pay to find himself standing safe and sound on the summit again. Well, he would not look down. He would get through the performance as quickly as possible, and return.
He was out on the tree, grasping the branch her hand had held on by. Yet why did the confounded trunk tremble and sway so, and—horror! it seemed to be giving way, actually sinking under him. The ghastly thought darted through his mind that there was all the difference in their weight—that that which would carry her would break down with him. His nerve was tottering. His face grew icy cold, and the hand which held the bough trembled violently. He was perched over that awful height even as she had been. He was not unused to heights, but to be suspended thus between heaven and earth in mid-air—no, to that he was not used. Beneath him the face of the great rock wall sloped away inwards. Anyone falling from here would strike the ground about thirty feet from its base. All the world seemed going round with him—not even the thought that Edala had just done the same thing availed to pull him together. He must go—must hurl himself off and end this agony of nightmare—when—
“You down there, Elvesdon? Well, come up, because it’s getting late, and it’s time to think of getting back.”
The calm, strong, matter of fact tones of Thornhill broke the spell like magic. This was an everyday performance after all, was the effect they conveyed. Elvesdon’s nerve had returned. He was himself again.
“Let’s see. What’s the best way of getting off?” he asked, trying to suppress the tremor in his voice.