She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to notice even Clare.
She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant. Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.
"Muriel"—when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and golden—"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"
Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness. But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She continued meditatively:
"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of them have had affaires de cœur? But very few!"
"Affaires de cœur?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington phraseology assisted her. De Cœur—of the heart. Of course.
"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"
"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and——"
"But were you in love with them?"
"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"