demoiselle."

He looked at her thoughtfully for a little while. She was fresh--fresh as
the smell of the earth in spring after a fall of rain. Her eyes, the
alertness of her face, the eager tones of her voice, were irresistible to
him, an old tired man. How much more irresistible then to a younger man.
Her buoyancy would lift such an one clear above his melancholy, though it
were deep as the sea. He himself, Michel Revailloud, felt twice the
fellow he had been when he sat in the balcony above the Arve.

"And what mountain is it to be, mademoiselle?" he asked.

The girl took a step from the door of the hotel and looked upward. To the
south, but quite close, the long thin ridge of the Aiguille des Charmoz
towered jagged and black against the starlit sky. On one pinnacle of that
ridge a slab of stone was poised like the top of a round table on the
slant. It was at that particular pinnacle that Sylvia looked.

"L'Aiguille des Charmoz," said Michel, doubtfully, and Sylvia swung round
to him and argued against his doubt.

"But I have trained myself," she said. "I have been up the Brevent and
Flegere. I am strong, stronger than I look."

Michel Revailloud smiled.

"Mademoiselle, I do not doubt you. A young lady who has enthusiasm is
very hard to tire. It is not because of the difficulty of that rock-climb
that I thought to suggest--the Aiguille d'Argentiere."

Sylvia turned with some hesitation to the younger guide.

"You too spoke of that mountain," she said.

Michel pressed his advantage.

"And wisely, mademoiselle. If you will let me advise you, you will sleep
to-morrow night at the Pavillon de Lognan and the next day climb the
Aiguille d'Argentiere."

Sylvia looked regretfully up to the ridge of the Charmoz which during
this last fortnight had greatly attracted her. She turned her eyes from
the mountain to Revailloud and let them rest quietly upon his face.

"And why do you advise the Aiguille d'Argentiere?" she asked.

Michel saw her eyes softly shining upon him in the darkness, and all the
more persisted. Was not his dear patron who must needs be helped to open
his eyes, since he would not open them himself, going to sleep to-morrow
in the Pavillon de Lognan? The roads to the Col Dolent and the Aiguille
d'Argentiere both start from that small mountain inn. But this was hardly
the reason which Michel could give to the young girl who questioned him.
He bethought him of another argument, a subtle one which he