"You wished you were better."
"O, I see; but suppose I would like to remain—for a while at least—a wicked, little undeveloped bud?"
"You can't. The bud must either bloom or wither."
"O, how dismal! Were you afraid, Mr. Hemstead, when the horses were running? I was."
"I was anxious. It certainly was a critical moment with that hill before us."
"How queer that we should have been talking of the future state just then! Suppose that, instead of sitting here cosily by you, I were lying on those rocks over there, or floating in that icy stream bleeding and dead?"
He turned and gave her a surprised look, and she saw the momentary glitter of a tear in his eye.
"Please do not call up such images," he said.
She was in a strangely excited and reckless mood, and did not understand herself. Forces that she would be long in comprehending were at work in her mind.
Partly for the sake of the effect upon him, and partly as the outgrowth of her strange mood, she continued, in a low tone which the others could not hear: "If that had happened, where should I have been now? Just think of it,—my body lying over there in this wild gorge, and I, myself, going away alone this wintry night. Where should I have gone? Where should I be now?"