Then her caprice changed. "I've half a mind to drop it into the river.
Would you jump after it?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking
over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost
perpendicularly below.

"If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I would jump quickly
enough," he replied.

She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her eyes.

"You mustn't talk chaff to me, sir; we'll see," and, snatching a glove
from her pocket, she held it out over the water. They were both of them
in that state of suppressed excitement which made such an experiment on
each other's nerve dangerous. Their eyes met, and neither flinched. If
she had dropped it, he would have gone after it.

"After all," she said, suddenly, "that would be taking a good deal of
trouble to get a mitten. If you are so anxious for it, I will give it to
you now;" and she held out the glove to him with an inscrutable face.

He sprang up from the ground. "Madeline, do you mean it?" he asked,
scarcely audibly, his face grown white and pinched. She crumpled the
obnoxious glove into her pocket.

"Why, you poor fellow!" she exclaimed, the wildfire in her eyes quenched
in a moment with the dew of pity. "Do you care so much?"

"I care everything," he said, huskily.