Barbara turned her head, and when she looked back Lister thought his boldness was justified. In a sense she had been very frank, although perhaps this situation made for frankness. They were alone on the face of the towering crag. All was very quiet but for the noise of falling water, and the only living object one could see was a buzzard hovering high up at a white cloud's edge. One could talk in the mountain solitude as one could not talk in a drawing-room. For all that, Lister felt he had not altogether broken the girl's reserve.
"One envies men like you who build railways and sail ships," she said, and now Lister wondered where she led. "You live a natural life, knowing bodily strain and primitive emotions. Sometimes you're exhausted and sometimes afraid. Your thought's fixed on the struggle; you're keenly occupied. Isn't it like that?"
"Something like that," Lister agreed. "Sometimes the strain gets monotonous."
"But it's often thrilling. Men and women need to be thrilled. People talk about the modern lust for excitement, but it isn't modern and I expect the instinct's sound. Civilization that gives us hot water before we get up and food we didn't grow is not all an advantage. Our bodies get soft and we're driven back on our emotions. Where we want action we get talk. Then one gets up against the rules; you mustn't be angry, you mustn't be sincere, you must use a dreary level calm."
Lister was puzzled and said nothing, but Barbara went on: "Perhaps some girls like this; others don't, and now and then rebel. We feel we're human, we want to live. Adventure calls us, as it calls you. We want to front life's shocks and storms; unsatisfied curiosity drives us on. Then perhaps romance comes and all the common longings of flesh and blood are transfigured."
She stopped, and Lister began to see a light. This was her apology for her rashness in Canada, all she would give, and he doubted if she had given as much to others. On the whole, he thought the apology good.
"Romance cheats one now and then," he remarked, and pulled himself up awkwardly, but Barbara was calm.
"I wonder whether it always cheats one!"
"I think not," he said. "Sometimes one must trust one's luck, and venture. All the same, philosophizing is not my habit, and when I didn't step lightly on the stone—"
"You mean, when you pushed the stone down?" Barbara interrupted.