ey could taste an innocence of happy intercourse free from
the dead conventions that imprison literal minds.

He urged his pace, yet did not quite overtake her. The girl kept always
just a little bit ahead of his best efforts.... And soon they left the
trees behind and passed on to the enormous slopes of the sea of snow
that rolled in mountainous terror and beauty to the stars. The wonder of
the white world caught him away. Under the steady moonlight it was more
than haunting. It was a living, white, bewildering power that
deliciously confused the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity upon
the heart. It was a personality that cloaked, and yet revealed, itself
through all this sheeted whiteness of snow. It rose, went with him, fled
before, and followed after. Slowly it dropped lithe, gleaming arms about
his neck, gathering him in....

Certainly some soft persuasion coaxed his very soul, urging him ever
forwards, upwards, on towards the higher icy slopes. Judgment and
reason left their throne, it seemed, completely, as in the madness of
intoxication. The girl, slim and seductive, kept always just ahead, so
that he never quite came up with her. He saw the white enchantment of
her face and figure, something that streamed about her neck flying like
a wreath of snow in the wind, and heard the alluring accents of her
whispering voice that called from time to time: "A little farther on, a
little higher.... Then we'll run home together!"

Sometimes he saw her hand stretched out to find his own, but each time,
just as he came up with her, he saw her still in front, the hand and arm
withdrawn. They took a gentle angle of ascent. The toil seemed nothing.
In this crystal, wine-like air fatigue vanished. The sishing of the ski
through the powdery surface of the snow was the only sound that broke
the stillness; this, with his breathing and the rustle of her skirts,
was all he heard. Cold moonshine, snow, and silence held the world. The
sky was black, and the peaks beyond cut into it like frosted wedges of
iron and steel. Far below the valley slept, the village long since
hidden out of sight. He felt that he could never tire.... The sound of
the church clock rose from time to time faintly through the air--more
and more distant.

"Give me your hand. It's time now to turn back."

"Just one more slope," she laughed. "That ridge above us. Then we'll
make for home." And her low voice mingled pleasantly with the purring of
their sk