which he scrambled, clutching at the tough
bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming
into his eyes. He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get to
the top before he dropped, exhausted. He thought he would die of the
beating of his heart; but it was better to die than to stop and be beaten
by a few yards. He stumbled up at last on to the little plateau at the
top. For full ten minutes he lay there on his face without moving, then
rolled over. His heart had given up that terrific thumping; he breathed
luxuriously, stretched out his arms along the steaming grass--felt happy.
It was wonderful up here, with the sun burning hot in a sky clear-blue
already. How tiny everything looked below--hotel, trees, village,
chalets--little toy things! He had never before felt the sheer joy of
being high up. The rain-clouds, torn and driven in huge white shapes
along the mountains to the South, were like an army of giants with
chariots and white horses hurrying away. He thought suddenly: "Suppose I
had died when my heart pumped so! Would it have mattered the least bit?
Everything would be going on just the same, the sun shining, the blue up
there the same; and those toy things down in the valley." That jealousy
of his an hour ago, why--it was nothing--he himself nothing! What did it
matter if she were nice to that fellow in the brown coat? What did
anything matter when the whole thing was so big--and he such a tiny scrap
of it?

On the edge of the plateau, to mark the highest point, someone had
erected a rude cross, which jutted out stark against the blue sky. It
looked cruel somehow, sagged all crooked, and out of place up here; a
piece of bad manners, as if people with only one idea had dragged it in,
without caring whether or no it suited what was around it. One might
just as well introduce one of these rocks into that jolly dark church
where he had left her the other day, as put a cross up here.

A sound of bells, and of sniffing and scuffling, roused him; a large grey
goat had come up and was smelling at his hair--the leader of a flock,
that were soon all round him, solemnly curious, with their queer yellow
oblong-pupilled eyes, and their quaint little beards and tails. Awfully
decent beasts--and friendly! What jolly things to model! He lay still
(having learnt from the fisherman, his guardian, that necessary habit in
the presence of all beasts), while the leader sampled the flav