Jack wanted to climb up there and shake her out of her frivolity. Which was strange when you consider that all his life, until three months ago, he had lived in the midst of just such unthinking flippancy, had been a part of it and had considered--as much as he ever considered anything--that it was the only life worth living. He went around the little rock pinnacle and stood looking somberly down at the devastation that was being wrought, with no greater beginning, probably, than a dropped match or cigarette stub. He was thinking hazily that so his old life had been swept away in the devastating effect of a passing whim, a foolish bit of play. The girl irritated him with her chatter--yet three months ago he himself would have considered it brilliant conversation, and would have exerted himself to keep pace with her. "Listen!" she cried suddenly, and Jack turned his head quickly before he remembered that the word had come to mean nothing more than a superfluous ejaculation hung, like a bangle on a bracelet, to the sentences of modern youth. "Listen, it's going to be dark before that fire burns itself out of the way. How am I going to get home? Which way would be best to go around it, do you think?" "No way at all," Jack replied shortly. "You can't go home." "Why, forevermore! I'll have to go somewhere else, then--to some farm house where I can phone. Kate would be simply wild if--" "Forget the farm house stuff. There aren't any such trimmings to these mountains. The next farm house is down around Keddie, somewhere. Through the woods, and mountain all the way." He said it rather crossly, for his nerves were what he called edgy, and the girl still irritated him. "Well, what do you know about that?" He had known she would say that. Cross between a peacock and a parrot, she must be, he thought vindictively. It was maddening that she would not--could not, perhaps?--live up to that goddess-on-the-mountain-top look she had sometimes. "I don't know anything about it except that it's hard luck for us both." "Well, what--?" She paused in the act of putting away her first-aid-to-the-complexion implements, and looked at him with her wide, purple eyes. "Why, you cross, mean, little stingy boy, you! You can have your old peak then. I'll go down and jump in the lake." She began to climb down from the little pinnacle quite as if she meant to do exactly as she said. "Aw, come out of it!" Jack tried not to turn and look at her anxiously, but he was a human being. "I'm not in it--yet," Marion retorted with dark meaning, and jumped to the ground. "Hey! you wanta break a leg?" He swung toward her. "Just to spite you, I wouldn't mind. Only you'd throw me down there amongst all those rocks and trees and make it my neck. Oh, would you look at that!"