so portentous that I roused myself
to effort and told her, all over again, as I realized afterwards, the
difficulties that had benighted me upon Titlis. Then Miss Satchel
regaled Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings of
the hotel. I became anxious to end this tension and went into the inn to
pay my bill and get my knapsack. When I came out Mary stood up.

"I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen," she said, and I could
have fancied the glasses of the companion flashed to hear the surname of
the morning reappear a Christian name in the afternoon....

"Is that woman behind us safe?" I asked, breaking the silence as we went
up the mountain-side.

Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second.

"She's always been--discretion itself."

We thought no more of Miss Satchel.

"This parting," said Mary, "is the worst of the price we have to
pay.... Now it comes to the end there seem a thousand things one hasn't
said...."

And presently she came back to that. "We shan't remember this so much
perhaps. It was there we met, over there in the sunlight--among those
rocks. I suppose--perhaps--we managed to say something...."

As the ascent grew steeper it became clear that if I was to reach the
Melch See Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come. And with a
"Well," and a white-lipped smile and a glance at the Argus-eyed hotel,
she held out her hand to me. "I shall live on this, brother Stephen,"
she said, "for years."

"I too," I answered....

It was wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her real and
living with the warm sunlight on her, and her face one glowing
tenderness. We clasped hands; all the warm life of our hands met and
clung and parted.

I went on alone up the winding path,--it zigzags up the mountain-side in
full sight of the hotel for the better part of an hour--climbing
steadily higher and looking back and looking back until she was just a
little strip of white--that halted and seemed to wave to me. I waved
back and found myself weeping. "You fool!" I said to myself, "Go on";
and it was by an effort that I kept on my way instead of running back to
her again. Presently the curvature of the slope came up between us and
hid her altogether, hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs....

It seemed to me that I could not possibly see her any more. It was as if
I knew that sun had set for ever.

Sec. 7

I lay at the Melch See Inn that night, and rose b