vious day after I had
come over the shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft little shining
pathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romantic
intensification in the morning light. "The rule of the game," said I,
"is that one stops and waits for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps that
rule."

We talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a little aloof until
my coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchel produced that frequent and most
unpleasant bye-product of a British education, an intelligent interest
in etymology. "I wonder," she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscience
and eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is _called_
Titlis. There must be _some_ reason...."

Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and
Mary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps all
the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our
pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back
the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped
her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little
memories.

"I suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen."

She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'm
glad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might have
been--anywhere."

"Last night," I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear your
voice again. I thought I did."

"I too. I wonder--if we had some dim perception...."

She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking
well.... But your eyes--they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working
too hard?"

"A conference--what did you call them once?--a Carnegieish conference in
London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey
dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too
much. It _was_ too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to
rest here for a day."

"Well,--rest here."

"With you!"

"Why not? Now you are here."

"But---- After all, we've promised."

"It's none of our planning, Stephen."

"It seems to me I ought to go right on--so soon as breakfast is over."

She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment
of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always
been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to
it.

"It isn't natural," she decid