"I'll get it yet," she called across the water, with renewed determination.
"I think, if you'll allow me, I will break in," came the deferential voice after a time. "It really must be very tiring to jump like that."
"Not at all; thank you," she retorted, without a pause. "I never--give in."
"So it appears. Will you allow me to come over and help?"
Come over and help, indeed! Marjory's growing anger slackened to contempt. As if he could come over without a detour of half a mile down or quarter of a mile up the river; and he must know it, unless he had no memory. "You can't," she jerked between her efforts. "You had--better slack line--and sit down--I'll get it somehow."
Very much "somehow." Her hat fell off first. Then, after a desperate spring, in which she succeeded in clutching a lower branch, a hairpin struck work. Hot, dishevelled, exasperated, yet still determined, she persevered without deigning another reference to the silence over the way, until an arm clothed in grey tweed reached over hers and bent the branch down within her reach. She looked round, and, even in her surprise, the great personal charm and beauty of the face looking into hers struck her almost painfully; for it seemed to soothe her quick vexation, and so to claim something from her.
"I jumped," he said, answering the look on hers. "It is quite easy by the fall."
Something new to her, something which sent a lump to her throat, made her turn away and say stiffly: "I am sorry I gave you the trouble of coming. It would have been better if you had broken in. Good morning."
He stood grave as a judge, courteous, deferential, yet evidently amused, still bending down the bough.
"Will you not finish the task you began? You said you never gave in; besides, I can hardly do it for myself." The fact was palpable; it required two hands to disentangle a singularly awkward knot. To deny this would be to confess her own annoyance, so she turned back again. Rather an awkward task with a face so close to your own, watching your ineptitude. And yet she forgot her impatience in a sudden thought. If he had fallen! If that face had had the life crushed out of it!