en she entered the valley of
Saas were safely packed away in the hotel, and she wore a leather belt
and loose knickerbockers and puttees--a costume that suited the fine,
long lines of her limbs far better than any feminine walking-dress could
do. Her complexion had resisted the snow-glare wonderfully; her skin had
only deepened its natural warmth a little under the Alpine sun. She had
pushed aside her azure veil, taken off her snow-glasses, and sat smiling
under her hand at the shining glories--the lit cornices, the blue
shadows, the softly rounded, enormous snow masses, the deep places
full of quivering luminosity--of the Taschhorn and Dom. The sky was
cloudless, effulgent blue.

Capes sat watching and admiring her, and then he fell praising the day
and fortune and their love for each other.

"Here we are," he said, "shining through each other like light through a
stained-glass window. With this air in our blood, this sunlight soaking
us.... Life is so good. Can it ever be so good again?"

Ann Veronica put out a firm hand and squeezed his arm. "It's very good,"
she said. "It's glorious good!"

"Suppose now--look at this long snow-slope and then that blue deep
beyond--do you see that round pool of color in the ice--a thousand feet
or more below? Yes? Well, think--we've got to go but ten steps and lie
down and put our arms about each other. See? Down we should rush in a
foam--in a cloud of snow--to flight and a dream. All the rest of
our lives would be together then, Ann Veronica. Every moment. And no
ill-chances."

"If you tempt me too much," she said, after a silence, "I shall do
it. I need only just jump up and throw myself upon you. I'm a desperate
young woman. And then as we went down you'd try to explain. And that
would spoil it.... You know you don't mean it."

"No, I don't. But I liked to say it."

"Rather! But I wonder why you don't mean it?"

"Because, I suppose, the other thing is better. What other reason could
there be? It's more complex, but it's better. THIS, this glissade, would
be damned scoundrelism. You know that, and I know that, though we might
be put to it to find a reason why. It would be swindling. Drawing the
pay of life and then not living. And besides--We're going to live, Ann
Veronica! Oh, the things we'll do, the life we'll lead! There'll be
trouble in it at times--you and I aren't going to run without friction.
But we've got the brains to get over that, and tongues in our heads to