d the plot was definitely abandoned. Chayne knew very well that Garratt
Skinner's passion for the Alps was a deep and real one. Perhaps it was
that alone which had brought him back to Chamonix. Perhaps one day in the
train, traveling northward from Italy, he had looked from the window and
seen the slopes of Monte Rosa white in the sun--white with the look of
white velvet--and all the last twenty years had fallen from him like a
cloak, and he had been drawn back as with chains to the high playground
of his youth. Chayne could very well understand that possibility, and
eased of his fears he walked away with Sylvia back to the open square in
the middle of the town. Darkness had come, and both stopped with one
accord and looked upward to the massive barrier of hills. The rock peaks
stood sharply up against the clear, dark sky, the snow-slopes glimmered
faintly like a pale mist, and incredibly far, incredibly high, underneath
a bright and dancing star, shone a dim and rounded whiteness, the
snow-cap of Mont Blanc.

"A year ago," said Sylvia, drawing a breath and bethinking her of the
black shadows which during those twelve months had lain across her path.

"Yes, a year ago we were here," said Chayne. The little square was
thronged, the hotels and houses were bright with lights, and from here
and from there music floated out upon the air, the light and lilting
melodies of the day. "Sylvia, you see the cafe down the street there by
the bridge?"

"Yes."

"A year ago, on just such a night as this, I sat with my guide, Michel
Revailloud. I was going to cross the Col Dolent on the morrow. He had
made his last ascent. We were not very cheerful. And he gave me as a
parting present the one scrap of philosophy his life had taught him. He
said: 'Take care that when the time comes for you to get old that you
have some one to share your memories. Take care that when you go home in
the end, there shall be some one waiting in the room and the lamp lit
against your coming.'"

Sylvia pressed against her side the hand which he had slipped
through her arm.

"But he did more than give advice," Chayne continued, "for as he went
away to his home in the little village of Les Praz-Conduits, just across
the fields, he passed Couttet's Hotel and saw you under the lamp talking
to a guide he knew. You were making your arrangements to ascend the
Charmoz. But he dissuaded you."

"Yes."

"He convinced you that your first mountain should be the A