exertion and glad to draw her breath
at her ease, she looked down and was astonished. So far below her
already seemed the glacier she had left, so steep the rocks up which
she had climbed.

"You are not tired?" said Chayne.

Sylvia laughed. Tired, when a dream was growing real, when she was
actually on the mountain face! She turned her face again to the rock-wall
and in a little more than an hour after leaving the foot of the gully she
stepped out on to a patch of snow on the shoulder of the mountain. She
stood in sunlight, and all the country to the east was suddenly unrolled
before her eyes. A moment before and her face was to the rock, now at her
feet the steep snow-slopes dropped to the Glacier of Saleinaz. The crags
of the Aiguille Dorees, and some green uplands gave color to the
glittering world of ice, and far away towered the white peaks of the
Grand Combin and the Weisshorn in a blue cloudless sky, and to the left
over the summit of the Grande Fourche she saw the huge embattlements of
the Oberland. She stood absorbed while the rest of the party ascended to
her side. She hardly knew indeed that they were there until Chayne
standing by her asked:

"You are not disappointed?"

She made no reply. She had no words wherewith to express the emotion
which troubled her to the depths.

They rested for a while on this level patch of snow. To their right the
ridge ran sharply up to the summit. But not by that ridge was the summit
to be reached. They turned over on to the eastern face of the mountain
and traversed in a straight line across the great snow-slope which sweeps
down in one white unbroken curtain toward the Glacier of Saleinaz. Their
order had been changed. First Jean advanced. Chayne followed and after
him came Sylvia.

The leading guide kicked a step or two in the snow. Then he used the adz
of his ax. A few steps still, and he halted.

"Ice," he said, and from that spot to the mountain top he used the pick.

The slope was at a steep angle, the ice very hard, and each step had to
be cut with care, especially on the traverse where the whole party moved
across the mountain upon the same level, and there was no friendly hand
above to give a pull upon the rope. The slope ran steeply down beneath
them, then curved over a brow and steepened yet more.

"Are the steps near enough together?" Chayne asked.

"Yes," she replied, though she had to stretch in her stride.

And upon that Jean dug his pick in the s