‘To be sure it is,’ he answered.
She turned again to me.
‘You see it is all a sham! Last night it pretended to be on the very edge of the road and hanging over our heads at an awful height. Now it has gone a long way back, is not so very high, and certainly does not hang over. I ought not to have been satisfied with that precipice. It took me in.’
I did not reply at once. Clara’s words appeared to me quite irreverent, and I recoiled from the very thought that there could be any sham in nature; but what to answer her I did not know. I almost began to dislike her; for it is often incapacity for defending the faith they love which turns men into persecutors.
Seeing me foiled, Charley advanced with the doubtful aid of a sophism to help me.
‘Which is the sham, Miss Clara?’ he asked.
‘That Eiger mountain there.’
‘Ah! so I thought.’
‘Then you are of my opinion, Mr Osborne?’
‘You mean the mountain is shamming, don’t you—looking far off when really it is near?’