deep blue colombines, white lilies, and yellow anemones.
Incomparable beauty lived and breathed in each foot of pasture; and when
he raised his eyes from the grass they fed on visionary splendors of
snow and rock, stretching into the heavens.

No life visible--except a line of homing cattle, led by a little girl
with tucked-up skirt and bare feet. And--in the distance--the slender
figure of a woman walking--stopping often to gather a flower--or to
rest? Not a woman of the valley, clearly. No doubt a traveller,
weather-bound like himself at the inn. He watched the figure a little,
for some vague grace of movement that seemed to enter into and make a
part of that high beauty in which the scene was steeped; but it
disappeared behind a fold of pasture, and he did not see it again.

In spite of the multitude of vehicles gathered about the inn there were
not so many guests in the <i>salle-a-manger</i>, when Ashe entered it, as he
had expected. He supposed that a majority of these vehicles must be
return carriages from Brieg. Still there was much clatter of talk and
plates, and German seemed to be the prevailing tongue. Except for a
couple whom Ashe took to be a Genevese professor and his wife, there was
no lady in the room.

He lingered somewhat late at table, toying with his orange, and reading
a <i>Journal de Geneve</i>, captured from a neighbor, which contained an
excellent "London letter." The room emptied. The two Swiss handmaidens
came in to clear away soiled linen and arrange the tables for the
morning's coffee. Only, at a farther table, a <i>couvert</i> for one person,
set by itself, remained still untouched.

He happened to be alone in the room when the door again opened and a
lady entered. She did not see him behind his newspaper, and she walked
languidly to the farther table and sat down. As she did so she was
seized with a fit of coughing, and when it was over she leaned her head
on her hands, gasping.

Ashe had half risen--the newspaper was crushed in his hand--when the
Swiss waitress whom the men of the inn called Fraeulein Anna--who was,
indeed, the daughter of the landlord--came back.

"How are you, madame?" she said, with a smile, and in a slow English of
which she was evidently proud.

"I'm better to-day," said the other, hastily. "I shall start to-morrow.
What a noise there is to-night!" she added, in a tone both fretful and
weary.

"We are so full--it is the accident to the road, madame. Will mada