That she should feel so intensely about something which did not concern himself roused his jealousy, and he set himself to interrupt her train of thought by saying boisterously, "This is a ripping place! What's it like above the fall? Let's climb it." He strolled closer to the waterfall to see if there was an easy way up the rock, but was recalled by a ready, embarrassed murmur from her.
"I can't...."
He imagined she was moved by shame at his greater strength, as she had been when they ran together, and he said encouragingly:
"Why not? You've got nailed boots."
But she continued to stand stiffly on a rock by the edge of the red pool, and stared over his head at the spray and repeated, "I can't."
He wondered from her blush if in his ignorance of girls he had done something to offend her, and turned away; but she misunderstood that, and cried fierily:
"Och, I'm not feared! I've done it twenty times. But I took a vow. Oh," she faltered, suddenly the youngest of all articulate things, "you'll laugh at me!"
"I won't!" he answered fiercely and gripped one of her hands.
"It was like this," she said, looking round-eyed and dewily solemn like a child in church. "Climbing up there used to be a great pleasure to me. I used to come here a lot with Rachael Wing. And then I heard Victor Grayson speak—oh, he is a wonderful man; he seemed hardly airthly; you felt you had to make some sacrifice. I made a vow I'd never climb it again till I had done something for the social revolution. And I've not done a thing yet."
They exchanged a long, confiding look, a mutual pressure of their souls; but before he could say something reverently sympathetic she had uttered a sharp exclamation, and was looking past him at the waterfall, which a sudden gust of wind had blown out from the rock like a lady's skirt. "If we were climbing that now, yon spray would be on our faces, and I love the prick of cold water!" she burst out. "Whatever for did I make that daft-like vow? A lot of good it's like to do the social revolution! I really am a fool sometimes!"