"How?"
"By telling you that if you do not go on, I shall jump into the water, and get to the other bank in that way."
He laughed. But as he did so he suddenly felt a conviction come over him, owing to an expression he saw in her eyes, that she was capable of carrying out her threat. He seized her hands; but she wrested them from his grasp; and as she did so he had a vision of her figure in the water below. He could easily rescue her, of course; but it would be a situation whose pleasures he should fail to appreciate, both of them wet through, and many miles from home. She had no sooner freed her hands, therefore, than he took a firmer hold of her, so that she could not stir.
But she still openly exulted; her face, close to his, was brilliant with light and mirth. "That's of no use," she said. "You cannot possibly walk backward on this narrow tree, even if you could carry me—which I doubt."
It was true that his back was towards the bank which was near, the one they had been approaching, and that he could not make his way thither on that narrow surface without seeing where he was going. He had flushed a little at her taunt. "I can carry you back to the side we started from," he said.
"No, you cannot do that, either. For I could easily blind you with my hands, and make you stumble."
"Garda!—how absurd!"
"Yes; but it's you who look so," she answered, bursting into a peal of irrepressible glee.
Winthrop had the feeling that she might be right. He knew that he was flushed and angry; no man likes to be laughed at, even by a girl of sixteen. Her eyes, though over-flowing with mirth, had still an unconquerable look in them. Suddenly he released her. "Your actions are ridiculous," he said; "I can only leave you to yourself." And turning, he crossed to the near bank. He had successfully resisted his impulse, which had been to take her, mocking and mirthful as she was, and carry her back to the bank from which they had started; he felt sure that he could have done it in spite of any resistance she might have offered.
Garda ran after him, and put her arm in his. "Are you vexed with me?" she said, looking up coaxingly in his face.