ched, not to say
egotistical."

"That is because you only climb mountains and handle men, _mon cher_,
instead of trying to paint them, or translate them into verse. You are
spared the artist's complication of a dual personality; of two souls
imprisoned in one body; the one who enjoys, and loves, and suffers; and
the one who looks on, and picks every emotion to pieces. I am afraid
the one you disapprove of has had the upper hand in me so far. Perhaps
it is your mission to develop the other into a healthier state of
activity."

"I hope to Heaven it may be," her husband answered fervently. "The
present state of things strikes me as a trifle inhuman."

"But indeed I am not inhuman! Only . . . we have still a good deal to
learn about one another, Eldred, although we are man and wife. You
confess to an amazing ignorance of women; while my own varied
experience of men has lain chiefly among 'the sayers of words'; and one
can hardly class you under that heading!"

"Good Lord, no! I should hope not."

Quita threw up her head and laughed outright.

"Really, Eldred, you are delightful!"

"Glad to hear it," Lenox replied, a shade of sarcasm in his tone.
"It's the first time I have been accused of such a thing."

He quickened his pace; and she, divining a slight jar in the
atmosphere, said no more. The supreme art in human intercourse is the
art of punctuation, and in the long pause that ensued, silence
accomplished her perfect work.

Higher up they emerged on an open space of roadway, where the pines
came abruptly to an end; and the path shelved sheer from its broken
railing to the Visp Valley below. Instinctively Quita drew rein and
drank in every detail of the vision before her with the wordless
satisfaction that is the hall-mark of the true Nature-worshipper.
Lenox stood quietly at her side, his gaze riveted on her face. He had
seen many mountains, giants among their kind; but never till now had he
beheld the glory of them reflected in a woman's eyes. At that moment
they seemed the only sentient things in a world of rock, and snow, and
sunshine. It was as if the round earth, and the pillars thereof, had
been made for them, and them alone.

Above the road a weather-beaten hut struck an isolated note of life,
and across the valley Matterhorn towered,--solitary, superb,--his
rugged head and shoulders thrust heavenward through a diaphanous scarf
of cloud. Suddenly Quita Lenox fronted her husband, and his fa