A big slate-quarry is a very impressive sight. You walk across a great amphitheater whose walls of slate rise high above you, their green-trimmed edges sharply cut against the sky. You pick your way among pools of water so smooth, so clear, that they reflect like mirrors the blue sky and the high slate walls of the quarry. One such pool—the largest—lay in the middle of the vast amphitheater, and in it the towering cliffs of slate were reflected even more clearly than in the others.
"I never saw such reflections," she was saying, as they skirted the big pond. "They're almost more real than the real thing. I am glad we came here; it's all so clear and bright and new-looking. I wonder—"
"I wouldn't walk quite so near the edge, if I was you, sir," said the foreman, who was their guide.
"Why?" Edward asked, gazing at the reflection of high cliffs in the pool at his side, "is the water deep—"
And even as he spoke his eyes were opened; but before he could obey their mandate, with a cry that went to his heart and held it she caught his arm and pulled him back. For in that instant she, too, had seen that this pool which reflected so perfectly the tall precipices of the quarry was not a pool at all, but another deep quarry within the first, and that what it held was no reflection, but a sheer and dreadful depth of precipice going down—she would not look to see how far. And he had been walking within six inches of its brink, carelessly and at ease, as one does walk by the safely shelving edge of any pond.
She did not let his arm go when she had drawn him away from that perilous edge; she held it closely pressed against her side, and when he looked at her he saw that her face was white and changed. The great precipice above them swayed a little to her eyes—she dared not look at the precipice below. She held his arm closely and more closely, folding both hands on it. The foreman was saying something. Neither of them heard what it was, only both caught the concluding words:
"Perhaps you'd like to see the place, sir."
"Thank you," said Edward, mechanically, "and then I think we must leave you. It's been most kind of you to show us all this; we've been most interested."