I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she
said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all sure that I could
say that. I never knew before that I was weak. But then I never met
strength before."

"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little
overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with
experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to take on any
other cargo, as yet."

She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the
upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on
him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've
taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever
so many ways you seem positively . . . naïve! You needn't go thinking that
I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to anybody
before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and danced and
whooped it up before the door. You know how everybody always thinks of
me as laughing all the time. I do wish everything hadn't been said
already so many times. If it weren't that it's been said so often, I'd
like to say that I have always been laughing to keep from crying."

"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he proposed.

She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she exclaimed;
"the least little thing you say, I see the most wonderful possibilities
in it. I know _you'd_ say what you meant, no matter how many thousands
had said it before. And since I know it's not stupidness in you, why, it
seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a kind of courage I'd
never thought of before. I see now, how, after all, those stupid people