ugh the rain forest, getting drenched with
spray and hardly noticing it, until they came to the opening near the
Devil's Cataract at the south end, and sat down to gaze at the
splendour and wonder outspread.

Then Diana spoke a little in something of an undertone, half to Meryl,
half to the air:

"A god did it. I don't know which--Jupiter or Pan, or Apollo or
Hercules--and when they grew tired of the earth and went off to other
planets, they just left it behind as a child might a castle he has
built in the sand; and by and by some crabs crawled along and found
the castle, and sat down and looked at it because it seemed to them
so wonderful; and by and by some humans found the gods' waterfall,
crawled up to it, and sat down and wondered. That's all there is to
do. O, Meryl, I wish I were a goddess and not a worm. The waters are
mocking us. Don't you hear them?... I just feel as if there were
something about it all I can't bear."

Meryl smiled a little tender smile. To her Diana in all her moods was
adorable. In her shy, fierce, tense ones, as now, she was best of all.

"What does it say to you, Meryl?..." the girl went on. "Do you feel as
if you hated it and worshipped it both together? Hated its remote
magnificence and devilish cruelty, and worshipped it because you
couldn't help yourself, either from fear or wonder? I don't know
which, only I feel ... I feel ... as if I ought to throw over
something I loved as a sacrifice of propitiation. And it goes on just
the same--think of it--year after year, century after century, just
calmly spilling magnificence on the desert air! I believe I'm
frightened, Meryl. Tell me what it all says to you."

Meryl looked dreamily along the glistening mighty cascades, and then
spoke softly:

"I feel I'm in the presence of one of the world's biggest things, and
it is inspiring. You know that sentence of James Lane Allen's, 'When
one has heard the big things calling, how they call and call, day and
night, day and night!...' Here they call louder, that is my chief
feeling. I look at this great natural wonder, and whatever there is in
me most akin to it swells upward. I feel I must do great things or die
... be great or not at all. And while I feel like this there is a
sense of kinship, as if some spirit of the waters understands."

"Perhaps that is why I am afraid," breathed Diana. "I don't care about
greatness. I don't want to be great. It all seems so unreal. I like
the sunshine, a