Italians and illiterate Irish repentant with gabble-gabble about the
sixth and ninth commandments. It's just all cloaks, sentiment and
spiritual rouge and panaceas. I'll tell you there is no God, not even
a definite abstract goodness; so it's all got to be worked out for the
individual by the individual here in high white foreheads like mine, and
you're too much the prig to admit it." She let go her reins and shook
her little fists at the stars.

"If there's a God let him strike me--strike me!"

"Talking about God again after the manner of atheists," Amory said
sharply. His materialism, always a thin cloak, was torn to shreds by
Eleanor's blasphemy.... She knew it and it angered him that she knew it.

"And like most intellectuals who don't find faith convenient," he
continued coldly, "like Napoleon and Oscar Wilde and the rest of your
type, you'll yell loudly for a priest on your death-bed."

Eleanor drew her horse up sharply and he reined in beside her.

"Will I?" she said in a queer voice that scared him. "Will I? Watch!
_I'm going over the cliff!_" And before he could interfere she had
turned and was riding breakneck for the end of the plateau.

He wheeled and started after her, his body like ice, his nerves in a
vast clangor. There was no chance of stopping her. The moon was under a
cloud and her horse would step blindly over. Then some ten feet from
the edge of the cliff she gave a sudden shriek and flung herself
sideways--plunged from her horse and, rolling over twice, landed in
a pile of brush five feet from the edge. The horse went over with a
frantic whinny. In a minute he was by Eleanor's side and saw that her
eyes were open.

"Eleanor!" he cried.

She did not answer, but her lips moved and her eyes filled with sudden
tears.

"Eleanor, are you hurt?"

"No; I don't think so," she said faintly, and then began weeping.

"My horse dead?"

"Good God--Yes!"

"Oh!" she wailed. "I thought I was going over. I didn't know--"

He helped her gently to her feet and boosted her onto his saddle. So
they started homeward; Amory walking and she bent forward on the pommel,
sobbing bitterly.

"I've got a crazy streak," she faltered, "twice before I've done things
like that. When I was eleven mother went--went mad--stark raving crazy.
We were in Vienna--"

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love
waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss
good night, b