like to follow the river back
to its source."

"The Rhone?"

"No, the Arve; it runs so fast."

"Then we will go to Chamonix."

They spent the afternoon drifting about in a little sailing boat. The
beautiful lake produced far less impression upon Arthur than the gray
and muddy Arve. He had grown up beside the Mediterranean, and was
accustomed to blue ripples; but he had a positive passion for swiftly
moving water, and the hurried rushing of the glacier stream delighted
him beyond measure. "It is so much in earnest," he said.

Early on the following morning they started for Chamonix. Arthur was in
very high spirits while driving through the fertile valley country;
but when they entered upon the winding road near Cluses, and the great,
jagged hills closed in around them, he became serious and silent.
From St. Martin they walked slowly up the valley, stopping to sleep at
wayside chalets or tiny mountain villages, and wandering on again as
their fancy directed. Arthur was peculiarly sensitive to the influence
of scenery, and the first waterfall that they passed threw him into
an ecstacy which was delightful to see; but as they drew nearer to
the snow-peaks he passed out of this rapturous mood into one of dreamy
exaltation that Montanelli had not seen before. There seemed to be a
kind of mystical relationship between him and the mountains. He would
lie for hours motionless in the dark, secret, echoing pine-forests,
looking out between the straight, tall trunks into the sunlit outer
world of flashing peaks and barren cliffs. Montanelli watched him with a
kind of sad envy.

"I wish you could show me what you see, carino," he said one day as he
looked up from his book, and saw Arthur stretched beside him on the moss
in the same attitude as an hour before, gazing out with wide, dilated
eyes into the glittering expanse of blue and white. They had turned
aside from the high-road to sleep at a quiet village near the falls
of the Diosaz, and, the sun being already low in a cloudless sky, had
mounted a point of pine-clad rock to wait for the Alpine glow over the
dome and needles of the Mont Blanc chain. Arthur raised his head with
eyes full of wonder and mystery.

"What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being in a blue void that has
no beginning and no end. I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming
of the Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly."

Montanelli sighed.

"I used to see those things once."

"Do