descended at some late hour by Swiss reckoning, and
discovered two ladies in the morning sunlight awaiting breakfast at a
little green table. One rose slowly at the sight of me, and stood and
surveyed me with a glad amazement.

Sec. 2

There she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds and
with her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though I had never
ceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us both
and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss Summersley
Satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very
cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much
more than its duty by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair
a little, pushing herself back from the table and regarding
me--intelligently.

It was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. I think
our common realization of the need of masking the reality of our
encounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face upon
this meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us.
Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. Mine was to make it plain we
met by accident.

"It's Mr.--Stephen!" said Mary.

"It's you!"

"Dropped out of the sky!"

"From over there. I was benighted and go there late."

"Very late?"

"One gleam of light--and a yawning waiter. Or I should have had to break
windows.... And then I meet you!"

Then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immense
gravity of this position growing upon us. A little tow-headed waiter-boy
appeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand.

"You'll have your coffee out here with us?" said Mary.

"Where else?" said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative,
and told the tow-headed waiter.

Belatedly Mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "My friend Miss
Summersley Satchel. Mr.--Stephen." Miss Satchel and I bowed to each
other and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light.
"Mr. Stephen," said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is an
old friend of my mother's. And I haven't seen him for years. How is
Mrs. Stephen--and the children?"

I answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the Titlis. I
addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to Miss Satchel. I did
perhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance....
From where I stood, the whole course of the pre