“Make them go. Give them the whip. I’m not going to walk up that mountain to please any brute,” Helen said, beginning to grow impatient.
Mark knew better than to use the whip, much as he wished to do so. Paul might not resent it, but Virginia was of a different make and knew how to use her heels if thwarted in having her way.
“How long do you think she will stand here if I don’t get out?” Helen asked, and Mark replied, “All night, I dare say. She is gentle enough except about the hills, which she abominates. She was born on a western ranche. Hadn’t you better give in?”
“No, never,” Helen said laughingly. “I’ll not be beaten by a horse. I can stay here as long as she can, if you’ll stay with me.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” Mark said, and folding his arms resigned himself to the situation, wondering which would give in first, the woman or the beast.
Neither showed any signs of it, and he began to think what he should do. Craig and Alice had walked on slowly, sometimes stopping to gather wild flowers and sometimes sitting on a boulder to rest. Evidently they were enjoying themselves, for more than once Alice’s merry laugh came down the hill and Helen saw Craig pinning some field flowers on her hat. Suddenly it struck her more forcibly than it had ever done before that Alice was just the one to attract a man like Craig. This would never do, for whatever her relations to Mark might be she looked upon Craig as her property.
“I submit to the inevitable,” she said, extending her arms to Mark, who lifted her very carefully and set her down upon the grass with a slight pressure of which he was scarcely conscious, but which Helen felt and knew that her subjugation of him was complete.
He was her slave and she could now give her attention to Craig. She had said she could not walk up the hill, but she did walk very rapidly until she reached the boulder on which Alice and Craig were seated. Then she grew so tired and exhausted and faint that when at last they started up the remainder of the declivity she said to Alice, “I must lean on you or never get there.”
This was surprising to Alice, who had heard her cousin boast of her ability to walk miles among the Alps and knew that she had walked up Mt. Washington without apparent fatigue.
“Let me assist you,” Craig said, offering her his arm, and finally passing it round her the better to support her when he felt her totter as if about to fall.