"For what? It is rashness, foolhardiness! Come back, please!"
His call sounded commanding, frenzied, but Cecilia paid no heed to it. Standing immediately on the verge of the precipice, she flung her veil around the cross. It was an agonizing spectacle--one single incautious movement, and she would lie crushed at the base.
"Fräulein von Wildenrod, come back! I implore you!" The voice of the young engineer was muffled and full of emotion. He seemed to suffer the agonies of a life-time in that moment.
Cecilia turned around and smiled. "Can you really beg, Herr Runeck? I am coming directly, only one more look into that chasm, which has its fascination for me." And, with her arm slung around the cross, she actually bent over the abruptly precipitous wall of rock, and looked fearlessly down.
Egbert involuntarily took one step forward, his arm quivered, as though he would drag her away by force from her dangerous position. He did not, however, but every drop of blood seemed to have left his face, when she finally left her place and came to him again.
"Do you believe now in my fearlessness?" she asked, tauntingly.
"That rash sport was really not necessary to convince me of it," said he harshly, and yet he drew a sigh of relief, when he once more saw the foolhardy girl on firm ground. "A misstep on that spot and you would have been lost!"
She recklessly shrugged her shoulders. "I never get dizzy, and just wanted for once to feel that deliciously thrilling sensation of standing up there, close over the precipice. One feels something like a demoniacal drawing to the bottom, it is as though one must rush to destruction, whether or no. Have you ever felt anything like it?"
"No," said Egbert coldly. "One must have a great deal of--time, to indulge themselves in such feelings."
"Which you deem objectionable."