on the
whole, but the feeling was a superficial one, with deeper and uneasier
feelings underneath. Still, I had practically redeemed my impulsive
promise to Catherine Evers; her son and this woman once parted, it
should be easy to keep them apart, and my knowledge of the woman
forbade me to deny the fullest significance to her departure. She had
gone away to stay away--from Bob. She had listened to me the less with
her ears, because her reason and her heart had been compelled to heed.
To be sure, she saw the unsuitability, the impossibility, as clearly as
we did. But it was I who, at all events, had helped to make her see it;
wherefore I deserved well of Catherine Evers, if of no other person in
the world.

Oddly enough, this last consideration afforded me least satisfaction; it
seemed to bring home to me by force of contrast the poor figure that I
must assuredly cut in the eyes of the other two, the still poorer
opinion that they would have of me if ever they knew all. I did not care
to pursue this train of thought. It was a subject upon which I was not
prepared to examine myself; to change it, I thought of Bob's present
peril, which I had almost forgotten as I lounged abstractedly in the
empty hall. If anything were to happen to him, in the vulgar sense! What
an irony, what poetic punishment for us survivors! And yet, even as I
rehearsed the ghastly climax in my mind, I told myself that the mother
would rather see him even thus, than married to a widow who had also
been divorced; it was the younger woman who would never forgive me, or
herself.

Disappointed faces met me on my next visit to the veranda. The little
crowd there had dwindled to a group. I could have had the telescope now
for as long as I liked: the upper part of the Matterhorn was finally and
utterly effaced and swallowed up by dense white mist and cloud. My
friend the mountaineer looked grave, but his disfigured face did not
wear the baulked expression of others to which he drew my attention.

"It is like the curtain coming down with the man's head still in the
lion's mouth," said he.

"I hope," said I devoutly, "that you don't seriously think there's any
analogy?"

The climber looked at me steadily, and then smiled.

"Well, no, perhaps I don't think it quite so bad as all that. But it's
no use pretending it isn't dangerous. May I ask if you know who the
foolhardy fellow is?"

I said I did not know, but mentioned my suspicion, only begging my