man by nature; but he was now a
lover and had need to enhance his mistress. How better do that than by
calling himself a d----d fool (the greatest blame he knew)? It follows
that if he had been a fool, Urquhart had not! Impudent dog, if you
like, but not a fool. Now, for the life of him, James could not
despise a man who was not a fool. Nor could he hate one whom he had
bested. He did not hate Urquhart; he wasn't angry with him; he
couldn't despise him. On the contrary, he was sorry for him.

But now the miracle happened, and one could think of nothing else. As
they tramped through the cold mist, over snow that was still crisp and
short with frost, the light gained by degrees. The flying fog became
blue, then radiant: quite suddenly they burst into the sun. The
dazzling field stretched on all sides so far as the eye could see.
Snow and cloud, one could not distinguish them; and above them the
arch of hyaline, a blue interwoven with light, which throbbed to the
point of utterance, and drowned itself in the photo-sphere. The light
seemed to make the sun, to climb towards the zenith, to mass and then
to burst in flame. All three men took it in, each in his fashion.
Lingen was greatly moved; Urquhart became jocular.

"Well," he said to Macartney, "what do you make of that? That's worth
coming up for. That ought to extenuate a good deal." James was quick
to notice the phrase.

"Oh," he said, "you can show me things. I'm very much obliged to you.
This is a wonder of the world."

"Now what the deuce does he mean by that?" Urquhart thought to
himself. Had Lucy told him anything? He didn't believe it. Impossible.
Women don't tell.

They had seven miles of snow, pretty soft by now, and steadily up
hill. They bent themselves seriously to it, and found no occasion for
talk. There were crevasses--green depths of death--to be avoided.
Their guide, light-eyed for scares, seemed to know them all, and
reserved his alarm for signs in the sky invisible to the party. He
mended the pace, which became rather severe. Francis Lingen was
distressed; Macartney kept back to give him company. Urquhart forged
on ahead with the guide.

By four in the afternoon one at least of them was gruelled. That was
Lingen. "If we don't get down after all, it'll go hard with
Poplolly," Urquhart said to James. James replied, "Oh, we must get
down. That's all nonsense." Urquhart said nothing, and they went on.

They reached a point where their guide, sto