"It is nothing but a log—just a broken log of wood," he assured her. "Forget it, and tell me more about how I came to get this bushel-basket head of mine. It aches like sin!"
She described the plunge of the unmanageable canoe over the fall and its immediate consequences, minifying her own part in the rescue.
"You needn't try to wiggle out of it," he said soberly at the end of the brief recounting. "You saved my life. If you hadn't pulled me out, I'd be down there in that pool right now, going round and round like that bally log of wood. What do you charge for saving a man's life, Lucetta?"
"A promise from the man to be more careful in future. But we mustn't slide back into the artificial things, Donald. For all you know, my motive might have been altogether selfish—perhaps it was selfish. My first thought was a screaming horror of being left alone here in this wilderness. It made me fight, fight!"
"Is that the truth, Lucetta?" he inquired solemnly.
"Y-yes."
"All of the truth?"
"Oh, perhaps not quite all. There is such a thing as the life-saving instinct, isn't there? Even dogs have it sometimes. Of course I couldn't very well swim out and leave you to drown."
"No," he put in definitively, "you couldn't—and what's more, you hadn't the first idea of doing such a thing. And that other thing you told me was only to relieve my sense of obligation. You haven't relieved it—not an ounce. And I don't care to have it relieved. Let it go for the time being, and tell me what became of the canoe."
"I haven't the faintest notion. I didn't see it again after we went over the fall. Of course it is smashed and ruined and lost, and we are perfectly helpless again."