ica.

"Then we go on to this place, the Oeschinensee. It's a lake among
precipices, and there is a little inn where we can stay, and sit and eat
our dinner at a pleasant table that looks upon the lake. For some days
we shall be very idle there among the trees and rocks. There are boats
on the lake and shady depths and wildernesses of pine-wood. After a day
or so, perhaps, we will go on one or two little excursions and see how
good your head is--a mild scramble or so; and then up to a hut on a pass
just here, and out upon the Blumlis-alp glacier that spreads out so and
so."

She roused herself from some dream at the word. "Glaciers?" she said.

"Under the Wilde Frau--which was named after you."

He bent and kissed her hair and paused, and then forced his attention
back to the map. "One day," he resumed, "we will start off early and
come down into Kandersteg and up these zigzags and here and here, and so
past this Daubensee to a tiny inn--it won't be busy yet, though; we
may get it all to ourselves--on the brim of the steepest zigzag you can
imagine, thousands of feet of zigzag; and you will sit and eat lunch
with me and look out across the Rhone Valley and over blue distances
beyond blue distances to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa and a long
regiment of sunny, snowy mountains. And when we see them we shall at
once want to go to them--that's the way with beautiful things--and
down we shall go, like flies down a wall, to Leukerbad, and so to Leuk
Station, here, and then by train up the Rhone Valley and this little
side valley to Stalden; and there, in the cool of the afternoon, we
shall start off up a gorge, torrents and cliffs below us and above us,
to sleep in a half-way inn, and go on next day to Saas Fee, Saas of
the Magic, Saas of the Pagan People. And there, about Saas, are ice
and snows again, and sometimes we will loiter among the rocks and trees
about Saas or peep into Samuel Butler's chapels, and sometimes we will
climb up out of the way of the other people on to the glaciers and snow.
And, for one expedition at least, we will go up this desolate valley
here to Mattmark, and so on to Monte Moro. There indeed you see Monte
Rosa. Almost the best of all."

"Is it very beautiful?"

"When I saw it there it was very beautiful. It was wonderful. It was the
crowned queen of mountains in her robes of shining white. It towered up
high above the level of the pass, thousands of feet, still, shining, and
white, and belo