The lines of pain she had noticed about his eyes and mouth still remained.
“Oh, it is not dangerous,” he declared. “As a boy I have climbed up worse places than that; but I was barefooted then and a sort of wild animal. You remember how I looked and acted when I first met you? In the eyes of the social world I am still not much better off, for the social world—your world—draws a sharp line at birth and fortune, and they are things some of us have to do without.”
He had got out of the buggy and was turning away. She had a startled impulse to deny what he had just said, but suitable words could not be so quickly summoned. In no little chagrin and fear of his opinion of her, she sat watching him as he climbed the steep, clinging to this or that projecting stone crevice or deep-rooted shrub. How strong, handsome, and genuine he looked, with his fine, fearless head bared to the sun and breeze! She saw him pause for seconds at a time, looking for a new foothold in the rocky soil as the one he stood on slowly crumbled, rattled down the incline, and shot over the cliff just beneath him.
She called out to him warningly once, and she was startled at the new quality in her voice. What could it mean? she asked herself. Surely she was not beginning to—She pulled her eyes from him and stared almost angrily at her folded hands, telling herself that she could not deeply care for any man. Just then she heard a small avalanche of disrupted stone sliding down the mountain-side, and, looking up, she saw Paul hanging by a single hand to a shrub, his foothold completely gone. She screamed and stood up in the buggy, only to have him turn his face, while his feet swung free, and smile reassuringly.
“Don't be afraid,” he called out. “I'm all right.” And then she saw him calmly placing his foot on another projection.
From that point he moved upward till the violets were reached, and she saw him gathering them and twisting them together in a tiny bunch with a reverence of touch which was observable even at that distance. Then, the stems of the flowers held between his lips, he began to make his way back, and moments of keen suspense followed in which she looked away from him to avoid the consciousness of his danger. Presently he was by her side, his brow beaded with perspiration, his broad chest rising and falling from his exertion. Without a word he gave her the violets and got into the buggy.
“Why did you take all that risk?” she asked reproachfully. “I want the flowers, it is true; but, oh! if you had lost your hold and fallen—” She went no further.
“It does seem dangerous when you look at it from down here,” he answered, critically glancing up at the cliff. “But that is because we can see the full height of the bluff. Up there, you know, I couldn't look over the edge. If I had, perhaps I might have grown dizzy.”
“Paul,” Ethel said, after they had remained silent for several minutes, “I am very grateful to you. When I am with you I don't suffer so much over poor Jennie's death. Somehow you inspire me with your faith. I am going to ask you a favor—one favor, and then I'm done with it. Will you please tell me positively, in so many words, that you really are convinced that she is still in existence. I know you've already said so, in a way, but I want to remember your exact words, so if I become despondent again I can repeat them over and over to myself.”
Paul laughed and glanced at her tenderly and wistfully. “I believe it as positively as I believe that I am here with you at this moment,” he said, quite gravely.