ere the
petrifying branches of trees lie in the blue deeps of an icy lake, and
pine-trees clamber among gigantic boulders. A little inn flying a
Swiss flag nestles under a great rock, and there they put aside their
knapsacks and lunched and rested in the mid-day shadow of the gorge
and the scent of resin. And later they paddled in a boat above the
mysterious deeps of the See, and peered down into the green-blues and
the blue-greens together. By that time it seemed to them they had lived
together twenty years.

Except for one memorable school excursion to Paris, Ann Veronica had
never yet been outside England. So that it seemed to her the whole world
had changed--the very light of it had changed. Instead of English villas
and cottages there were chalets and Italian-built houses shining white;
there were lakes of emerald and sapphire and clustering castles, and
such sweeps of hill and mountain, such shining uplands of snow, as she
had never seen before. Everything was fresh and bright, from the kindly
manners of the Frutigen cobbler, who hammered mountain nails into her
boots, to the unfamiliar wild flowers that spangled the wayside. And
Capes had changed into the easiest and jolliest companion in the world.
The mere fact that he was there in the train alongside her, helping her,
sitting opposite to her in the dining-car, presently sleeping on a seat
within a yard of her, made her heart sing until she was afraid their
fellow passengers would hear it. It was too good to be true. She would
not sleep for fear of losing a moment of that sense of his proximity. To
walk beside him, dressed akin to him, rucksacked and companionable, was
bliss in itself; each step she took was like stepping once more across
the threshold of heaven.

One trouble, however, shot its slanting bolts athwart the shining warmth
of that opening day and marred its perfection, and that was the thought
of her father.

She had treated him badly; she had hurt him and her aunt; she had done
wrong by their standards, and she would never persuade them that she
had done right. She thought of her father in the garden, and of her aunt
with her Patience, as she had seen them--how many ages was it ago? Just
one day intervened. She felt as if she had struck them unawares. The
thought of them distressed her without subtracting at all from the
oceans of happiness in which she swam. But she wished she could put the
thing she had done in some way to them so that it wou