at first, then to her elbow. Even then she moved her head enough to look
backward over the abyss. "The train," she whispered and, shuddering,
dropped her face on her relaxed arm.

Morganstein ventured to glance back. Ragged fragments torn from the cloud
below rose swirling across the opposite mountain top, and between their
edges, like a picture in a frame, appeared briefly the roofs of the little
station. But where the Oriental Limited had stood, the avalanche had
passed. "God Almighty!" he repeated impotently, then immediately the sense
of this appalling catastrophe whet the edge of his personal terror.
"Come!" he cried; "come, you can't stop here. It's dangerous. Come, you'll
freeze--or worse."

She was silent. She made no effort to rise or indeed to move. He began to
press by her and on in the direction of that safe spur. But presently
another dread assailed him; the dread of the city-bred man--accustomed to
human intercourse, the swing of business, the stir of social life, to face
great solitudes alone. This cross-fear became so strong it turned him back
in a second panic. Then floundering to keep his equilibrium after an
incautious step, he sat down heavily and found himself skidding towards
the larger crevasse. He lifted his alpenstock and in a frenzy thrust it
into the ice between his knees. It caught fast just short of the brink
and held him astride, with heels dangling over the abyss. He worked away
cautiously, laboriously, shaking in all his big, soft bulk; and would have
given up further attempt to rescue Beatriz Weatherbee had he not at this
moment discovered himself at her side.

He had not yet tried to rise to his feet, so safe-guarding himself with
the alpenstock thrust once more in the ice, he paused to take the flask
from his pocket and poured all that remained of the liquor into the cup.
It was a little over half full. Possibly he remembered how lavish he had
been with those previous draughts, for he looked at his companion with a
kind of regret as he lifted the cup unsteadily to drink. Then, gathering
the remnants of his courage, he put his arm under her head, raising it
while he forced the small surplus of brandy he had left between her lips.
She revived enough under the scalding swallow to push the cup away.
Anywhere else he would have laughed at her feeble effort to throw off his
touch; but he did not urge her to finish the draught, and, as he had done
earlier that day, himself hastily drained