d acting under domination, and
there's no other way of explaining the puzzle. I was out of sight, they
bullied her, and she yielded--bewilderingly, past comprehension it
seems--cat!--until you remember what she's made of: she's a reed. Now I
reappear armed with powers to give her a free course, and she, that
abject whom you beheld recently renouncing me, is, you will see, the
young Aurora she was when she came striking at my door on the upper Alp.
That was a morning! That morning is Clotilde till my eyes turn over! She
is all young heaven and the mountains for me! She's the filmy light above
the mountains that weds white snow and sky. By the way, I dreamt last
night she was half a woman, half a tree, and her hair was like a dead
yewbough, which is as you know of a brown burnt-out colour, suitable to
the popular conception of widows. She stood, and whatever turning you
took, you struck back on her. Whether my widow, I can't say: she must
first be my wife. Oh, for tomorrow!'

'What sort of evening is it?' said the baroness.

'A Mont Blanc evening: I saw him as I came along,' Alvan replied, and
seized his hat to be out to look on the sovereign mountain again. They
touched hands. He promised to call in the forenoon next day.

'Be cool,' she counselled him.

'Oh!' He flung back his head, making light of the crisis. 'After all,
it's only a girl. But, you know, what I set myself to win! . . . The
thing's too small--I have been at such pains about it that I should be
ridiculous if I allowed myself to be beaten. There is no other reason for
the trouble we 're at, except that, as I have said a thousand times, she
suits me. No man can be cooler than I.'

'Keep so,' said the baroness.

He walked to where the strenuous blue lake, finding outlet, propels a
shoulder, like a bright-muscled athlete in action, and makes the
Rhone-stream. There he stood for an hour, disfevered by the limpid liquid
tumult, inspirited by the glancing volumes of a force that knows no
abatement, and is the skiey Alps behind, the great historic citied plains
ahead.

His meditation ended with a resolution half in the form of a prayer (to
mixed deities undefined) never to ask for a small thing any more if this
one were granted him!

He had won it, of course, having brought all his powers to bear on the
task; and he rejoiced in winning it: his heart leapt, his imagination
spun radiant webs of colour: but he was a little ashamed of his frenzies,
though h