behind him.

In a little while the guide turned his face to the slope and cut upward
instead of across. The slope was so steep that instead of cutting zigzags
across its face, he chopped pigeon holes straight up. They moved from one
to the other as on a ladder, and their knees touched the ice as they
stood upright in the steps. For a couple of hours the axes never ceased,
and then the leader made two or three extra steps at the side of the
staircase. On to one of them he moved out, Chayne went up and joined him.

"Come, mademoiselle," he said, and he drew in the rope as Sylvia
advanced. She climbed up level with them on the ladder and waited, not
knowing why they stood aside.

"Go on, mademoiselle," said the guide. She took another step or two upon
snow and uttered a cry. She had looked suddenly over the top of the
mountain on to the Aiguille Verte and the great pile of Mont Blanc, even
as Revailloud had told her that she would. The guide had stood aside that
she might be the first to step out upon the summit of the mountain. She
stood upon the narrow ridge of snow, at her feet the rock-cliffs
plastered with bulging masses of ice fell sheer to the glacier.

Her first glance was downward to the Col Dolent. Even at this hour when
the basin of the valley was filled with sunshine that one corner at the
head of the Glacier d'Argentiere was still dead white, dead black. She
shivered once more as she looked at it--so grim and so menacing the
rock-wall seemed, so hard and steep the riband of ice. Then Chayne joined
her on the ridge. They sat down and ate their meal and lay for an hour
sunning themselves in the clear air.

"You could have had no better day," said Chayne.

Only a few white scarfs of cloud flitted here and there across the sky
and their shadows chased each other across the glittering slopes of ice
and snow. The triangle of the Aiguille Verte was over against her, the
beautiful ridges of Les Courtes and Les Droites to her right and beyond
them the massive domes and buttresses of the great white mountain. Sylvia
lay upon the eastern slope of the Argentiere looking over the brow, not
wanting to speak, and certainly not listening to any word that was
uttered. Her soul was at peace. The long-continued tension of mind and
muscle, the excitement of that last ice-slope, both were over and had
brought their reward. She looked out upon a still and peaceful world,
wonderfully bright, wonderfully beautiful, and wonderful