Miss Wynton will be wise if she listens to the points of
the argument in the hotel."

"Perhaps it would be better to return at once," said Helen timidly.
Her sensitive nature warned her that these two men were ready to
quarrel, and that she herself, in some nebulous way, was the cause of
their mutual enmity.

Beyond this her intuition could not travel. It was impossible that she
should realize how sorely her wish to placate Bower disquieted
Spencer. He had seen the two under conditions that might, indeed, be
explicable by Helen's fright; but he would extend no such charitable
consideration to Bower, whose conduct, no matter how it was viewed,
made him a rival. Yes, it had come to that. Spencer had hardly spoken
a word to Stampa during the toilsome journey from Maloja. He had
looked facts stubbornly in the face, and the looking served to clear
certain doubts from his heart and brain. He wanted to woo and win
Helen for his wife. He was enmeshed in a net of his own contriving,
and its strands were too strong to be broken. If Helen was reft from
him now, he would gaze on a darkened world for many a day.

But he was endowed with a splendid self control. That element of cast
steel in his composition, discovered by Dunston after five minutes'
acquaintance, kept him rigid under the strain.

"Sorry I should figure as spoiling your excursion, Miss Wynton," he
was able to say calmly; "but, when all is said and done, the weather
is bad, and you will have plenty of fine days later."

Bower crept nearer. His action suggested stealth. Although the wind
was howling under the deep eaves of the hut, he almost whispered.
"Yes, you are right--quite right. Let us go now--at once. With you and
me, Mr. Spencer, Miss Wynton will be safe--safer than with the guides.
They can follow with the stores. Come! There is no time to be lost!"

The others were so taken aback by his astounding change of front that
they were silent for an instant. It was Helen who protested, firmly
enough.

"The lightning seems to have given us an attack of nerves," she said.
"It would be ridiculous to rush off in that manner----"

"But there is peril--real peril--in delay. I admit it. I was wrong."

Bower's anxiety was only too evident. Spencer, regarding him from a
single viewpoint, deemed him a coward, and his gorge rose at the
thought.

"Oh, nonsense!" he cried contemptuously. "We shall be two hours on the
glacier, so five more minutes won't cut any ice. If