ches of snow. She waited until the deafening thunder peal was dying
away in eerie cadences. "Why are the rocks black here and almost white
in the valley?" she asked.

"Because they are young, as rocks go," was the smiling answer. "They
have yet to pass through the mill. They will be battered and bruised
and polished before they emerge from the glacier several years hence
and a few miles nearer peace. In that they resemble men. 'Pon my word,
Miss Wynton, you have caused me to evolve a rather poetic explanation
of certain gray hairs I have noticed of late among my own raven
locks."

"You appear to know and love these hills so well that I wonder--if you
will excuse a personal remark--I wonder you ever were able to tear
yourself away from them."

"I have missed too much of real enjoyment in the effort to amass
riches," he said slowly. "Believe me, that thought has held me
since--since you and I set foot on the Forno together."

"But you knew? You were no stranger to the Alps? I am beginning to
understand that one cannot claim kinship with the high places until
they stir the heart more in storm than in sunshine. When I saw all
these giants glittering in the sun like knights in silver armor, I
described them to myself as gloriously beautiful. Now I feel that they
are more than that,--they are awful, pitiless in their indifference
to frail mortals; they carry me into a dim region where life and death
are terms without meaning."

"Yes, that is the true spirit of the mountains. I too used to look on
them with affectionate reverence, and you recall the old days.
Perhaps, if I am deemed worthy, you will teach me the cult once more."

He bent closer. Helen became conscious that in her enthusiasm she had
spoken unguardedly. She moved away, slightly but unmistakably, a step
or two out into the open, for the hut on that side was not exposed to
the bitter violence of the wind.

"It is absurd to imagine us in a change of role," she cried. "I should
play the poorest travesty of Mentor to your Telemachus. Oh! What is
that?"

While she was speaking, another blinding flare of lightning flooded
moraine and glacier and pierced the veil of sleet. Her voice rose
almost to a shriek. Bower sprang forward. His left hand rested
reassuringly across her shoulders.

"Better come inside the hut," he began.

"But I saw someone--a white face--staring at me down there!"

"It is possible. There is no cause for fear. A party may have crossed