t go to see. You know it's not, and you know, too, that
Suzanne will call us when it is ready. A wonderfully capable woman, that
Suzanne. She didn't look upon me with favor at first, but I believe she
is really beginning to like me, to view me perhaps with approval as a
sort of candidate."

"Look how the snow is coming down!"

"But that's an old story. Let's go back to Suzanne."

"Oh no. She's coming for us."

It was true. The incomparable Suzanne stood in the doorway and summoned
them to breakfast.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DANGEROUS FLIGHT

It snowed all that day and all the next night. The lateness of the
season seemed to add to the violence of the storm, as if it would make
one supreme effort on these heights before yielding to the coming
spring. Many of the pines were blown down, and the snow lay several feet
deep everywhere. Now and then they heard thunderous sounds from the
gorges telling them that great slides were taking place, and it was
absolutely certain now that no one from the valley below could reach the
lodge for days.

The sight from the windows of the house, when the driving snow thinned
enough to permit a view, was magnificent. They saw far away peak on peak
and ridge on ridge, clothed in white, and sometimes they beheld the
valley filled with vast clouds of mists and vapors. Once John thought he
caught a glimpse of Zillenstein, a menacing gray shadow far below, but
the clouds in an instant floated between and he was not sure.

Yet it was a period of enchantment in the life of John Scott. Their very
isolation on the mountain, with Suzanne there in the double role of
servant and guardian, seemed to draw Julie and him more closely
together. The world had practically melted away beneath their feet. The
great war was gone for them. He was only twenty-two, but his experience
had made him mentally much older, and she, too, had gained in knowledge
and command of herself by all through which she had passed.

She showed to John a spirit and courage which he had never seen
surpassed in any woman, and mingled with it all was a lightness and wit
that filled the whole house with sunshine, despite the great storm that
raged continually without. In the music-room was a piano, and she played
upon it the beautiful French "little songs" that John loved. There were
books and magazines in plenty, and now he read to her and then she read
to him. Sometimes they sat in silence and through the thick glass of the