do was to repair it. But you were not obliged to know that I would so
readily admit my move to have been false. Whenever I have made a fool of
myself before, I have been for sticking it out, and trying to turn all
mankind--that is, _you_--into a a fool too, so that I shouldn't be an
exception. But this time, I think, I had a kind of inspiration. I felt
that my case was desperate. I felt that if I adopted my folly now I
adopted it forever. The other day I met a man who had just come home
from Europe, and who spent last summer in Switzerland. He was telling me
about the mountain-climbing over there,--how they get over the glaciers,
and all that. He said that you sometimes came upon great slippery,
steep, snow-covered slopes that end short off in a precipice, and that
if you stumble or lose your footing as you cross them horizontally, why
you go shooting down, and you're gone; that is, but for one little
dodge. You have a long walking-pole with a sharp end, you know, and as
you feel yourself sliding,--it's as likely as not to be in a sitting
posture,--you just take this and ram it into the snow before you, and
there you are, stopped. The thing is, of course, to drive it in far
enough, so that it won't yield or break; and in any case it hurts
infernally to come whizzing down upon this upright pole. But the
interruption gives you time to pick yourself up. Well, so it was with me
the other day. I stumbled and fell; I slipped, and was whizzing
downward; but I just drove in my pole and pulled up short. It nearly
tore me in two; but it saved my life." Richard made this speech with one
hand leaning on the neck of Gertrude's horse, and the other on his own
side, and with his head slightly thrown back and his eyes on hers. She
had sat quietly in her saddle, returning his gaze. He had spoken slowly
and deliberately; but without hesitation and without heat. "This is not
romance," thought Gertrude, "it's reality." And this feeling it was that
dictated her reply, divesting it of romance so effectually as almost to
make it sound trivial.

"It was fortunate you had a walking-pole," she said.

"I shall never travel without one again."

"Never, at least," smiled Gertrude, "with a companion who has the bad
habit of pushing you off the path."

"O, you may push all you like," said Richard. "I give you leave. But
isn't this enough about myself?"

"That's as you think."

"Well, it's all I have to say for the present, except that I am
pro