Chance

I shook my head. I was not shocked. What had kept her back all that

time, till I appeared on the scene below, she went on, was neither fear

nor any other kind of hesitation. One reaches a point, she said with

appalling youthful simplicity, where nothing that concerns one matters

any longer. But something did keep her back. I should have never

guessed what it was. She herself confessed that it seemed absurd to say.

It was the Fyne dog.

Flora de Barral paused, looking at me, with a peculiar expression and

then went on. You see, she imagined the dog had become extremely

attached to her. She took it into her head that he might fall over or

jump down after her. She tried to drive him away. She spoke sternly to

him. It only made him more frisky. He barked and jumped about her skirt

in his usual, idiotic, high spirits. He scampered away in circles

between the pines charging upon her and leaping as high as her waist. She

commanded, "Go away. Go home." She even picked up from the ground a bit

of a broken branch and threw it at him. At this his delight knew no

bounds; his rushes became faster, his yapping louder; he seemed to be

having the time of his life. She was convinced that the moment she threw

herself down he would spring over after her as if it were part of the

game. She was vexed almost to tears. She was touched too. And when he

stood still at some distance as if suddenly rooted to the ground wagging

his tail slowly and watching her intensely with his shining eyes another

fear came to her. She imagined herself gone and the creature sitting on

the brink, its head thrown up to the sky and howling for hours. This

thought was not to be borne. Then my shout reached her ears.

She told me all this with simplicity. My voice had destroyed her

poise--the suicide poise of her mind. Every act of ours, the most

criminal, the most mad presupposes a balance of thought, feeling and

will, like a correct attitude for an effective stroke in a game. And I

had destroyed it. She was no longer in proper form for the act. She was

not very much annoyed. Next day would do. She would have to slip away

without attracting the notice of the dog. She thought of the necessity

almost tenderly. She came down the path carrying her despair with lucid

calmness. But when she saw herself deserted by the dog, she had an

impulse to turn round, go up again and be done with it. Not even that

animal cared for her--in the end.