or him than all other spells in
the world combined--greater than love, revelry, pleasure, greater even
than study. He had always been afraid to let himself go. His pagan soul
dreaded her terrific powers of witchery even while he worshipped.

The little village already slept. The world lay smothered in snow. The
chalet roofs shone white beneath the moon, and pitch-black shadows
gathered against the walls of the church. His eye rested a moment on the
square stone tower with its frosted cross that pointed to the sky: then
travelled with a leap of many thousand feet to the enormous mountains
that brushed the brilliant stars. Like a forest rose the huge peaks
above the slumbering village, measuring the night and heavens. They
beckoned him. And something born of the snowy desolation, born of the
midnight and the silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of
the night, something that lay 'twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the
vast wintry spaces down into his heart--and called him. Very softly,
unrecorded in any word or thought his brain could compass, it laid its
spell upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the surface of his heart. The
power and quiet majesty of the winter's night appalled him....

Fumbling a moment with the big unwieldy key, he let himself in and went
upstairs to bed. Two thoughts went with him--apparently quite ordinary
and sensible ones:

"What fools these peasants are to sleep through such a night!" And the
other:

"Those dances tire me. I'll never go again. My work only suffers in the
morning." The claims of peasants and tourists upon him seemed thus in a
single instant weakened.

The clash of battle troubled half his dreams. Nature had sent her Beauty
of the Night and won the first assault. The others, routed and dismayed,
fled far away.

II

"Don't go back to your dreary old post office. We're going to have
supper in my room--something hot. Come and join us. Hurry up!"

There had been an ice carnival, and the last party, tailing up the
snow-slope to the hotel, called him. The Chinese lanterns smoked and
sputtered on the wires; the band had long since gone. The cold was
bitter and the moon came only momentarily between high, driving clouds.
From the shed where the people changed from skates to snow-boots he
shouted something to the effect that he was "following"; but no answer
came; the moving shadows of those who had called were already merged
high up against the village dark