"What if it should be he?" thought Sylvia. She had come all the way from England to meet him, and it was hard that he should jödel while she perished. Much good would it do her if her spirit beheld him bending over her crushed material remains.
Still the voice of the invisible one jödelled on.
"Help!" Sylvia added an impromptu to the chorus. "He may as well save 40 me, be he emperor or tourist. Oh, I hope this isn't a lesson not to climb too high. Ought I to call for help in Rhaetian or English? I'll try both, to make quite sure."
She did try both, with the result that the jödelling suddenly stopped. Instead, an iron-shod boot rang against a rock. Forgetting fear in desire to know whether the actor now to appear for the first time on her life's stage would be hero or super, her foot slipped from its scanty hold. Stumbling, she slid from the rocky ledge down to the plateau, finally landing on her knees at the feet of a young man who strode hastily round the corner.
"Himmel!" exclaimed a voice, half laughing, half startled. She dared not look up, lest she should meet disappointment. Would it be he, sent to her by Destiny, or some tourist, sent by Cook?
One who knew Maximilian's habits well (the only one, besides her mother, wholly taken into confidence) had told her that to find him as a man, and not an emperor, she should make her pilgrimage to 41 Heiligengelt in the chamois-hunting season. She had remembered this hint. She had come; was she now about to see?
Two brown hands were held out to help her. Slowly she raised her eyes. They travelled up and up. Beginning with a pair of big nailed boots, they glided over the knitted detail of woollen stockings, and were stopped for an instant at an unexpected obstacle in the shape of bare, muscular brown knees. (Thank goodness, at least Fate had spared her a tourist!) Short, shabby trousers; a gray coat, passemoiled with green, from one pocket of which protruded a great hunch of bread and ham, evidently just thrust in; broad shoulders; a throat like a column of bronze; a face—the blood leaped in Sylvia's veins and sang in her ears. It was he—it was he! Here was the eyrie: the eagle was at home.
All her life had but led up to this moment. Under the soft hat of green felt, adorned with the beard of a chamois, was the face she had dreamed of by night and day. A dark, austere face, with more of Mars than Apollo in its lines, but to her worth all the ideals of all the sculptors in the world. He was dressed as a chamois-hunter, and there 42 was nothing in the well-worn costume to distinguish the wearer from the type he represented; but as easily might the eagle to whom she likened him try to pass for a barnyard fowl as this man for a peasant—so Sylvia thought.
She hoped that he did not feel the beating in her fingers-ends as he caught her hands, lifted and set her on her feet. There was humiliation in this tempest of her pulses, knowing that he did not share it. To her, this meeting was an epoch: to him, a trivial incident. She would have keyed his emotion to hers, if she could, but since she had had years of preparation, he a single moment, perhaps she might have rested satisfied with the expression in his eyes.
It said, had she been calm enough to read it: "Is heaven raining goddesses to-day?"