of that year: "There is so very little
snow. It may take you some time to get off the glacier on to your
mountain. There is always a crevasse to cross."

"I know," said Sylvia, with a smile. "The bergschrund."

"I beg your pardon," said Chayne, and in his turn he smiled too. "Of
course you know these terms. I saw you reading a copy of the 'Alpine
Journal.'"

They dined together an hour later with the light of the sunset reddening
the whitewashed walls of the little simple room and bathing in glory the
hills without. Sylvia Thesiger could hardly eat for wonder. Her face was
always to the window, her lips were always parted in a smile, her gray
eyes bright with happiness.

"I have never known anything like this," she said. "It is all so strange,
so very beautiful."

Her freshness and simplicity laid their charm on him, even as they had
done on Michel Revailloud the night before. She was as eager as a child
to get the meal done with and to go out again into the open air, before
the after-glow had faded from the peaks. There was something almost
pathetic in her desire to make the very most of such rare moments. Her
eagerness so clearly told him that such holidays came but seldom in her
life. He urged her, however, to eat, and when she had done they went out
together and sat upon the bench, watching in silence the light upon the
peaks change from purple to rose, the rocks grow cold, and the blue of
the sky deepen as the night came.

"You too are making an ascent?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "I am crossing a pass into Italy. I am going away from
Chamonix altogether."

Sylvia turned to him; her eyes were gentle with sympathy.

"Yes, I understand that," she said. "I am sorry."

"You said that once before to me, on the steps of the hotel," said
Chayne. "It was kind of you. Though I said nothing, I was grateful"; and
he was moved to open his heart to her, and to speak of his dead friend.
The darkness gathered about them; he spoke in the curt sentences which
men use who shrink from any emotional display; he interrupted himself to
light his pipe. But none the less she understood the reality of his
distress. He told her with a freedom of which he was not himself at the
moment quite aware, of a clean, strong friendship which owed nothing to
sentiment, which was never fed by protestations, which endured through
long intervals, and was established by the memory of great dangers
cheerily encountered and overcome. It had