e bare slope of
grass. Half way up Chayne turned and looked down upon the house. There
was no longer any light in any window. He turned to Sylvia and slipped
his arm through hers.

"Come close," said he, and now there was no doubt the smile was real.
"Shall we keep step, do you think?"

"If we go always like this, we might," said Sylvia, with a smile.

"At times there will be a step to be cut, no doubt," said he.

"You once said that I could stand firm while the step was being cut," she
answered. Always at the back of both their minds, evident from time to
time in some such phrase as this, was the thought of the mountain upon
which their friendship had been sealed. Friendship had become love here
in the quiet Dorsetshire village, but in both their thoughts it had
another background--ice-slope and rock-spire and the bright sun over all.

CHAPTER XX

ON THE DOWN

Sylvia led the way to a little hollow just beneath the ridge of the
downs, a sheltered spot open to the sea. On the three other sides bushes
grew about it and dry branches and leaves deeply carpeted the floor. Here
they rested and were silent. Upon Sylvia's troubled heart there had
fallen a mantle of deep peace. The strife, the fears, the torturing
questions had become dim like the small griefs of childhood. Even the
incident of the lighted window vexed her not at all.

"Hilary," she said softly, lingering on the name, since to frame it and
utter it and hear her lips speaking it greatly pleased her, "Hilary," and
her hand sought his, and finding it she was content.

It was a warm night of August. Overhead the moon sailed in a cloudless
summer sky, drowning the stars. To the right, far below, the lamps of
Weymouth curved about the shore; and in front the great bay shimmered
like a jewel. Seven miles across it the massive bluff of Portland pushed
into the sea; and even those rugged cliffs were subdued to the beauty of
the night. Beneath them the riding-lights shone steady upon the masts of
the battle ships. Sylvia looked out upon the scene with an overflowing
heart. Often she had gazed on it before, and she marveled now how quickly
she had turned aside. Her eyes were now susceptible to beauty as they had
never been. There was a glory upon land and sea, a throbbing tenderness
in the warm air of which she had not known till now. It seemed to her
that she had lived until this night in a prison. Once the doors had been
set ajar for a little while--jus