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and looked out. It was a very odd sensation, like teetering at the edge of a great dropbut knowing you were perfectly safe. |
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"It's a lovely feeling, isn't it?" Mrs. Bates asked, coming to stand beside her. "But it really isn't nearly as high as it looks. I have never been able to decide why one gets the feeling of enormous height, almost of flying. Perhaps it's the sea below moving like that." |
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"Come away from there," Donald said sharply. "I know it's perfectly safe, but it gives me palpitations to watch you." He grinned apologetically as they came toward him. "Can't stand heights. They give me vertigo, and with that shifting water below this is worse than usual. I can't go near that side at all, not even at night because I know what's there." |
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"Oh, Donald, I'm so sorry," Mrs. Bates said remorsefully. "I forgot that. Now I remember that the first time you were here, you nearly fainted with fright when you came and looked over." |
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Donald looked a bit chagrined at Mrs. Bates's embarrassing memory, but Linda shook her head. |
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"It isn't fright," she said. "I read an article about that once. I don't remember whether its an extra delicate sense of balance or something to do with one's eyes, but height vertigo is a physical thing. It's like being tone deaf or color blind, not a disease or anything, just something you're born with. And you can't train yourself to get over it, so don't try." |
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