bbert passed through the hall to get his
overcoat and snow-boots, he saw men in the passage by the "sport-room,"
greasing their ski against an early start. Knapsack luncheons were being
ordered by the kitchen swing doors. He sighed. Lighting a cigarette a
friend offered him, he returned a confused reply to some question as to
whether he could join their party in the morning. It seemed he did not
hear it properly. He passed through the outer vestibule between the
double glass doors, and went into the night.

The man who asked the question watched him go, an expression of anxiety
momentarily in his eyes.

"Don't think he heard you," said another, laughing. "You've got to shout
to Hibbert, his mind's so full of his work."

"He works too hard," suggested the first, "full of queer ideas and
dreams."

But Hibbert's silence was not rudeness. He had not caught the
invitation, that was all. The call of the hotel-world had faded. He no
longer heard it. Another wilder call was sounding in his ears.

For up the street he had seen a little figure moving. Close against the
shadows of the baker's shop it glided--white, slim, enticing.

VI

And at once into his mind passed the hush and softness of the snow--yet
with it a searching, crying wildness for the heights. He knew by some
incalculable, swift instinct she would not meet him in the village
street. It was not there, amid crowding houses, she would speak to him.
Indeed, already she had disappeared, melted from view up the white vista
of the moonlit road. Yonder, he divined, she waited where the highway
narrowed abruptly into the mountain path beyond the chalets.

It did not even occur to him to hesitate; mad though it seemed, and
was--this sudden craving for the heights with her, at least for open
spaces where the snow lay thick and fresh--it was too imperious to be
denied. He does not remember going up to his room, putting the sweater
over his evening clothes, and getting into the fur gauntlet gloves and
the helmet cap of wool. Most certainly he has no recollection of
fastening on his ski; he must have done it automatically. Some faculty
of normal observation was in abeyance, as it were. His mind was out
beyond the village--out with the snowy mountains and the moon.

Henri Defago, putting up the shutters over his _cafe_ windows, saw him
pass, and wondered mildly: "Un monsieur qui fait du ski a cette heure!
Il est Anglais, done ...!" He shrugged his shoulders, as