"A Captain Chayne. He was at the hotel all last week. It was his friend who was killed on the Glacier des Nantillons."
"Were you alone at the inn, you and he?"
"Yes."
"Did he know your father?"
Sylvia stared at her mother.
"I don't know. I suppose not. How should he?"
"It's not impossible," replied Mrs. Thesiger. Then she leaned on the table. "It was he who put these ideas into your head about going away, about leaving me." She made an accusation rather than put a question, and made it angrily.
"No, mother," Sylvia replied. "He never spoke of you. The ideas have been growing in my mind for a long time, and to-day—" She raised her head, and turning slightly, looked up to where just behind her the ice-peaks of the Aiguilles du Midi and de Blaitière soared into the moonlit sky. "To-day the end came. I became certain that I must go away. I am very sorry, mother."
"The message of the mountains!" said her mother with a sneer, and Sylvia answered quietly:
"Yes."