ible to sustain a conversation unless the speakers dawdled.
Helen often found herself many yards in advance of the others. She
simply could not help breasting the steeper portions of the track. She
was drawn forward by an intense eagerness to begin the real business
of the day. Bower did not seek to restrain her. He thought her high
spirits admirable, and his gaze dwelt appreciatively on her graceful
poise as she stopped on the crest of some small ravine and looked back
at the plodders beneath. Attractive at all times, she was bewitching
that morning to a man who prided himself on his athletic tastes. She
wore a white knitted jersey and a short skirt, a costume seemingly
devised to reveal the lines of a slender waist and supple limbs. A
white Tam o' Shanter was tied firmly over her glossy brown hair with a
silk motor veil, and the stout boots which she had surveyed so
ruefully when Bower brought them to her on the previous evening after
interviewing the village shoemaker, were by no means so cumbrous in
use as her unaccustomed eyes had deemed them. Even the phlegmatic
guide was stirred to gruff appreciation when he saw her vault on to a
large flat boulder in order to examine an iron cross that surmounted
it.

"_Ach, Gott!_" he grunted, "that Englishwoman is as surefooted as a
chamois."

But Helen had found a name and a date on a triangular strip of metal
attached to the cross. "Why has this memorial been placed here?" she
asked. Bower appealed to Barth; but he shook his head. Karl gave
details.

"A man fell on the Cima del Largo. They carried him here, and he died
on that rock."

"Poor fellow!" Some of the joyous light left Helen's face. She had
passed the cross before, and had regarded it as one of the votive
offerings so common by the wayside in Catholic countries, knowing that
in this part of Switzerland the Italian element predominated among the
peasants.

"We get a fine view of the Cima del Largo from the _cabane_," said
Bower unconcernedly.

Helen picked a little blue flower that nestled at the base of the
rock. She pinned it to her jersey without comment. Sometimes the
callousness of a man was helpful, and the shadow of a bygone tragedy
was out of keeping with the glow of this delightful valley.

The curving mass of the glacier was now clearly visible. It looked
like some marble staircase meant to be trodden only by immortals. Ever
broadening and ascending until it filled the whole width of the rift
be