“You could if you were in love,” said Mrs. Fielding.

“Yes, perhaps you’re right.  In that case, I have never been enough in love to take the leap.”  Juliet spoke with a half smile.  Her eyes were fixed upon the top of the hill.  “But anyhow Lady Jo couldn’t talk, for she has just jilted Ivor Yardley the K. C. and gone to Paris to buy mourning.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Fielding.  “Why, I saw the description of the wedding-dress in the paper the other day.  It must have been a near thing.”

“It was,” said Juliet soberly.  “They were to have been married to-day.”

“And she broke it off!  That must have taken some pluck!”

“But she didn’t stay to face the music,” Juliet pointed out.  “That was what I hated in her.  She ought to have stayed.”

“Was she afraid of him then?”

“Afraid?  Yes, she was afraid of him—­and of everybody else.  I know that perfectly well, though you would never get her to admit it.  She was terrified in her heart—­and so she bolted.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” asked Mrs. Fielding.

Juliet made an odd gesture of the hands that was somehow passionate.  “Why should I?  I have disapproved of her for a long time.  Now we have finally quarrelled.  She behaved so badly—­so very badly.  I don’t want to meet her—­or any of her set—­again!”

Mrs. Fielding was silent for a moment.  She had not expected that intensity.  “Do you know, that doesn’t sound like you somehow?” she said at length, speaking with just a hint of embarrassment.

“But how do you know what I am really like?” said Juliet.  “Ah!  There is the sea again—­and the wonderful sky-line!  Is he going to stop?  Or are we going to plunge over the edge?”

She spoke with a little breathless laugh.  They had reached the summit of the great headland, and it looked for the moment as if the car must leap over a sheer precipice into the clear green water far below.  But even as she spoke, there came a check and a pause, and then they were standing still on a smooth stretch of grass not twenty feet from the edge.

The soft wind blew in their faces, and there was a glittering purity in the atmosphere that held Juliet spell-bound.  She breathed deeply, gazing far out over that sparkling sea of wonder.

“Oh, the magic of it!” she said.  “The glorious freedom!  It makes you feel—­as if you had been born again.”

Her companion watched her in silence, a certain curiosity in her look.

After many seconds Juliet turned round.  “Thank you for bringing me here,” she said.  “It has done me good.  I should like to stay here all day long.”

Her eyes travelled along the line of cliff towards that distant spot that had been the scene of her night adventure, and slowly returned to dwell upon a long deep seam in the side of the hill.

“That’s the lead mine,” observed Mrs. Fielding.  “It belongs to your aristocratic relatives, the Farringmores.  They are pretty badly hated by the miners, I believe.  But your friend Mr. Green is extremely popular with them.  He rather likes to be a king among cobblers, I imagine.”