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.