That's where we are
now--or were a minute ago. You can see that there is some sort of valley
in front of us--but that is all. If I could only see one mountain with
snow on it----"

"Why, it's all mountains and all snow, when you come to that," Thorpe
insisted, with jocose perversity. "You're on mountains yourself, all the
time."

"You know what I mean," she retorted. "I want to see something like the
coloured pictures in the hotels."

"Oh, probably it will be bright sunlight tomorrow," he said, for perhaps
the twentieth time that day.

"There--that looks like water!" said Alfred. "See? just beyond the
village. Yes, it is water. There's your Lake of Geneva, at all events."

"But it isn't the right colour," protested Julia, peering through the
glass. "It's precisely like everything else: it's of no colour at all.
And they always paint it such a lovely blue! Really, uncle, the Swiss
Government ought to return you your money."

"You wait till you see it tomorrow--or next day," said the uncle,
vaguely. He closed his eyes, and welcomed a drowsy mood. As he went off
to sleep, the jolting racket of the train mellowed itself into a murmur
of "tomorrow or next day, tomorrow or next day," in his ears.

CHAPTER XI

FROM their windows, high up and at the front of the big hotel, Julia
looked down upon the Lake of Geneva. She was in such haste to behold
it that she had not so much as unbuttoned her gloves; she held her
muff still in her hand. After one brief glance, she groaned aloud with
vexation.

Beyond the roadway, and the deserted miniature pier of Territet, both
dishevelled under melting and mud-stained snow, there lay a patch of
water--motionless, inconspicuous, of a faded drab colour--which at some
small distance out vaguely ceased to look like water and, yet a little
further out, became part and parcel of the dull grey mist. Save for the
forlorn masts of a couple of fishing boats, beached under the shelter
of the pier, there was no proof in sight that this was a lake at all. It
was as uninspiring to the eye as a pool of drippings from umbrellas in a
porch.

While her uncle and brother occupied themselves with the luggage being
brought up by the porters, she opened a window and stepped out upon
the tiny balcony. A flaring sign on the inner framework of this balcony
besought her in Swiss-French, in the interests of order, not to feed
the birds. The injunction seemed meaningless to her until she perceived,