"I was unhappy. For a long time I had been thinking over this. I hated it all—the people we met, the hotels we stayed at, the life altogether. Then at Chamonix I went up a mountain."
"Oho," said her father, sitting up alertly. "So you went up a mountain?
Which one?"
"The Aiguille d'Argentière. Do you know it, father?"
"I have heard of it," said Garratt Skinner.
"Well, somehow that made a difference. It is difficult to explain. But I felt the difference. I felt something had happened to me which I had to recognize—a new thing. Climbing that mountain, staying for an hour upon its summit in the sunlight with all those great still pinnacles and ice-slopes about me—it was just like hearing very beautiful music." She was sitting now leaning forward with her hands clasped in front of her and speaking with great earnestness. "All the vague longings which had ever stirred within me, longings for something beyond, and beyond, came back upon me in a tumult. There was a place in shadow at my feet far below, the only place in shadow, a wall of black rock called the Col Dolent. It seemed to me that I was living in that cold shadow. I wanted to get up on the ridge, with the sunlight. So I came to you."
It seemed to Sylvia, that intently as she spoke, her words were and must be elusive to another, unless that other had felt what she felt or were moved by sympathy to feel it. Her father listened without ridicule, without a smile. Indeed, once or twice he nodded his head to her words. Was it comprehension, she wondered, or was it only patience?
"When I came down from that summit, I felt that what I had hated before was no longer endurable at all. So I came to you."
Her father got up from his chair and stood for a little while looking out of the window. He was clearly troubled by her words. He turned away with a shrug of his shoulders.
"But—but—what can I do for you here?" he cried. "Sylvia, I am a very poor man. Your mother, on the other hand, has some money."
"Oh, father, I shan't cost you much," she replied, eagerly. "I might perhaps by looking after things save you money. I won't cost you much."