ly colored. Here
a spire would pierce the sunlight with slabs of red rock interspersed
amongst its gray; there ice-cliffs sparkled as though strewn with jewels,
bulged out in great green knobs, showed now a grim gray, now a
transparent blue. At times a distant rumble like thunder far away told
that the ice-fields were hurling their avalanches down. Once or twice she
heard a great roar near at hand, and Chayne pointing across the valleys
would show her what seemed to be a handful of small stones whizzing down
the rocks and ice-gullies of the Aiguille Verte. But on the whole this
new world was silent, communing with the heavens. She was in the hushed
company of the mountains. Days there would be when these sunlit ridges
would be mere blurs of driving storm, when the wind would shriek about
the gullies, and dark mists swirl around the peaks. But on this morning
there was no anger on the heights.

"Yes--you could have had no better day for your first mountain,
mademoiselle," said Jean, as he stood beside her. "But this is not your
first mountain."

She turned to him.

"Yes, it is."

Her guide bowed to her.

"Then, mademoiselle, you have great gifts. For you stood upon that
ice-slope and moved along and up it, as only people of experience stand
and move. I noticed you. On the rocks, too, you had the instinct for the
hand-grip and the foothold and with which foot to take the step. And that
instinct, mademoiselle, comes as a rule only with practice." He paused
and looked at her perplexity.

"Moreover, mademoiselle, you remind me of some one," he added. "I cannot
remember who it is, or why you remind me of him. But you remind me of
some one very much." He picked up the _Ruecksack_ which he had taken from
his shoulders.

It was half past eleven. Sylvia took a last look over the wide prospect
of jagged ridge, ice pinnacles and rock spires. She looked down once
more upon the slim snow peak of Mont Dolent and the grim wall of rocks
at the Col.

"I shall never forget this," she said, with shining eyes. "Never."

The fascination of the mountains was upon her. Something new had come
into her life that morning which would never fail her to the very end,
which would color all her days, however dull, which would give her
memories in which to find solace, longings wherewith to plan the future.
This she felt and some of this her friend understood.

"Yes," he said. "You understand the difference it makes to one's whole
life. E