urteously, recovering his composure with a smile that
was not without self-ridicule, and in a moment they were talking again
upon impersonal matters. But the episode, slight though it was, dwelt in
Dinah's mind thereafter with an odd persistence. She felt as if Isabel
had given her a flashlight glimpse of something which otherwise she would
scarcely have realized. In that single fleeting moment of revelation she
had seen that which no vision of knight in shining armour could have
surpassed.

They reached the _chalet_ at the top of the pass, and descended for tea.
The windows looked right down the snow-clad valley up which they had
come. The sun had begun to sink, and the greater part of it lay in
shadow.

Far away, rising out of the shadows, all golden amid floating mists, was
a mighty mountain crest, higher than all around. The sun-rays lighted up
its wondrous peaks. The glory of it was unearthly, almost more than the
eye could bear.

Dinah stood on the little wooden verandah of the _chalet_ and gazed and
gazed till the splendour nearly blinded her.

"Still watching the Delectable Mountains?" said Scott's voice at her
shoulder.

She made a little gesture in response. She could not take her eyes off
the wonder.

He came and stood beside her in mute sympathy while he finished his
cigarette. There was a certain depression in his attitude of which
presently she became aware. She summoned her resolution and turned
herself from the great vision that so drew her.

He was leaning against a post of the verandah, and she read again in his
attitude the weariness that she had marked earlier in the afternoon.

"Are you--troubled about your sister?" she asked him diffidently.

He threw away the end of his cigarette and straightened himself. "Yes, I
am troubled," he said, in a low voice. "I am afraid it was a mistake to
bring her here."

"I thought her looking better this morning," Dinah ventured.

His grey eyes met hers. "Did you? I thought it a good sign that she
should make the effort to speak to strangers. But I am not certain now
that it has done her any good. We brought her here to wake her from her
lethargy. Eustace thought the air would work wonders, but--I am not sure.
It is certainly waking her up. But--to what?"

His eyelids drooped heavily, and he passed his hand across his forehead
with a gesture that went to her heart.

"It's rather soon to judge, isn't it?" she said.

"Yes," he admitted. "But there is