trains subterraneously, consecrated to old sturdiness and modern
wisdom, serenely heedless of the blatant and the up-to-date, a bruised
spirit might heal itself in a seclusion cheered by green hills and
distant snowy ranges. It was such solitude that, in the first place, he
sought now. If in addition he could see the shadow of Edith passing
by--no more!--he felt that he would soon be inwardly strong again.

At Berne there is a hotel known chiefly to wise travelers--a hotel of
old wines, old silver, old traditions, handed down from father to son,
and from the son to the son's son. Standing on the edge of the bluff
which the city crowns, it dominates from its windows and terraces the
valley of the Aar. Swift and unruffled, the river glides through the
meadows like a sinuous ice-green serpent. Beyond the river and behind
the pastoral slopes of the Gurten hangs a curtain of mist, which lifts
at times to display the line of the Bernese Oberland, from the
Wetterhorn to the Bettfluh.

It is a hotel with which the learned people who sit in international
conferences and settle difficult questions are familiar. It was
sheltering a conference when Chip Walker arrived. Each of the nations
had appointed three distinguished men to consult with three
distinguished men from each of the other nations on possible
modifications in the rules of the Postal Union when the use of
aeroplanes became general in that service. The distinguished men met
officially in a great room of the Bundespalast; but unofficially they
could be seen strolling along the arcaded medieval streets, or feeding
the civic bears with carrots at the bear-pit, or reading or smoking or
sipping coffee and liqueurs in the fine semicircular hall of the hotel.
They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or
Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans.
The great national types were more or less easy to discern--except the
Americans. That is, Chip Walker could see no one whom he could recognize
offhand as a fellow-countryman. Three gentlemanly, jovial Englishmen
were easily made out, because, in Walker's phrase, they "flocked by
themselves" and in the intervals of sitting in the Bundespalast
complained that Berne had no golf-links. They also dressed for dinner
and dined in the restaurant. A few others did the same. But the majority
of the distinguished men preferred to spend the evening in the costumes
they had worn all day, and,