"What does it say to you, Meryl?..." the girl went on. "Do you feel as if you hated it and worshipped it both together? Hated its remote magnificence and devilish cruelty, and worshipped it because you couldn't help yourself, either from fear or wonder? I don't know which, only I feel ... I feel ... as if I ought to throw over something I loved as a sacrifice of propitiation. And it goes on just the same—think of it—year after year, century after century, just calmly spilling magnificence on the desert air! I believe I'm frightened, Meryl. Tell me what it all says to you."
Meryl looked dreamily along the glistening mighty cascades, and then spoke softly:
"I feel I'm in the presence of one of the world's biggest things, and it is inspiring. You know that sentence of James Lane Allen's, 'When one has heard the big things calling, how they call and call, day and night, day and night!...' Here they call louder, that is my chief feeling. I look at this great natural wonder, and whatever there is in me most akin to it swells upward. I feel I must do great things or die ... be great or not at all. And while I feel like this there is a sense of kinship, as if some spirit of the waters understands."
"Perhaps that is why I am afraid," breathed Diana. "I don't care about greatness. I don't want to be great. It all seems so unreal. I like the sunshine, and flowers, and trees, and birds, and four-footed things. I don't want to be bothered with my fellow-creatures; they are a nuisance. If they are in difficulties, and can't find a way out for themselves, they might just as well go under."
"You heartless little heathen!" affectionately.
The girl brightened suddenly. "Why! it understands, Meryl!... The Spirit of the Waters heard me, and now it is laughing. It is great enough to understand and appreciate the feelings of both of us. Don't you hear the note of revelling now?... Why!... it's all revelling. The waters are shrieking with joy. They've come tearing down the Zambesi valley for the rapture of plunging over the precipice, and now they are just beside themselves with the excitement and delight of it. O!... they heard me say I don't care about my fellow-creatures, that they are just a nuisance, and they're shouting to me, 'Neither do we ... neither do we!... Silly, wide-eyed, open-mouthed humans come and stare at us, and try to describe us, saying we are lovely and wonderful and pretty and such-like, and we just roar at them and their puniness and take our glorious plunge.' That is what the waters are saying to me now, Meryl. I feel as if I simply must plunge with them. Take me away. I can't bear any more to-day." And they went silently back through the lovely plantations to the hotel.
But in the evening, in the moonlight, her mood changed again.
"I feel a little like you to-night, Meryl. The big things do matter, of course. If I'm such a silly little goat I can't do anything big myself, I guess I'll help you whenever it's possible. And, of course, even humans matter a little, though I do like dogs and horses so much better; but there's something so calm and big and strong about the waters to-night, they are telling me all the time that the big things matter. O, Meryl, it's so lovely—so lovely—it hurts dreadfully...."
And after a pause: "If it hadn't been for you I should never have taken the trouble to come and see it. I won't grouse at the dust any more."
And later: "I'm glad there's no sign of a human habitation at hand, and that the wilderness is all round. They had to be splendidly isolated—magnificently alone—the god who did it understood that. One can think of the wide reaches of Africa afterwards, and the gem, like a priceless jewel, set in them. Deep silence, wide horizons, untrodden country on every hand, and this in the midst like a treasure tenderly enfolded."