rned before leaving
the room to put his private papers in order. The green morocco desk that
held them he took down from the shelf and laid upon the table. Tied to
the lid was the visiting card with his brother's London address "in case
of accident." On the way down to the hotel he wondered why he had done
this, for though imaginative, he was not the kind of man who dealt in
presentiments. Moods with him were strong, but ever held in leash.

"It's almost like a warning," he thought, smiling. He drew his thick
coat tightly round the throat as the freezing air bit at him. "Those
warnings one reads of in stories sometimes ...!"

A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over the edge of the hills
across the valley rose the moon. He saw her silver sheet the world of
snow. Snow covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It smothered
houses, streets, and human beings. It smothered--life.

V

In the hall there was light and bustle; people were already arriving
from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many
wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking
"snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the
hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass
windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home
from the _cafe_ to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that conflict he
used to imagine. He laughed because it suddenly seemed so unreal. He
belonged so utterly to Nature and the mountains, and especially to those
desolate slopes where now the snow lay thick and fresh and sweet, that
there was no question of a conflict at all. The power of the newly
fallen snow had caught him, proving it without effort. Out there, upon
those lonely reaches of the moonlit ridges, the snow lay ready--masses
and masses of it--cool, soft, inviting. He longed for it. It awaited
him. He thought of the intoxicating delight of ski-ing in the
moonlight....

Thus, somehow, in vivid flashing vision, he thought of it while he stood
there smoking with the other men and talking all the "shop" of ski-ing.

And, ever mysteriously blended with this power of the snow, poured also
through his inner being the power of the girl. He could not disabuse his
mind of the insinuating presence of the two together. He remembered that
queer skating-impulse of ten days ago, the impulse that had let her in.
That any mind, even an imaginative one, could pass beneath the sway