"To think of it! Up in the very midst of the mountain amphitheatre!" murmured Amy.
When seated side by side on the bench, silence fell. They had chatted much in the early stage of their ascent; or rather, Amy had chatted and Bee had listened, which was a not unusual division of labour between them. Bee was a good listener. But more than once Amy had detected a wandering of attention, which was not common. At least, it had not been common till lately.
"Dreaming, Bee?" she had asked; and Bee blushed. Amy noted the blush, putting that down also as something new.
But Amy too for once became dumb, as they gazed from their Alpine Hut over the wide snowy expanse. It was hardly a scene to induce light chatter.
The track by which they had mounted from the Oeschinensee was already lost in darkness. But in front stood forth the roseate peaks of the Blümlisalp; notably the Weisse Frau, square-shouldered, and clothed in a mantle of ineffably delicate pink; and beyond her, almost bending over her like a devoted bridegroom, stood the yet loftier Blümlisalphorn, scarcely less pure, though broken by lines and ridges of rock which lay at too sharp an angle to retain snow. Nearer was the bare and rocky Blümlisalp-stock, cold and grim in the twilight, rising abruptly from the névé of the glacier.
Long lingered the mysterious radiance of the afterglow on the spurs and slopes of those great Gothic peaks, until the last filmy veil, sea-green in hue, faded before the onslaught of night. Then attendant stars began to twinkle in the vault over the Blümlisalphorn, forming a little crown above his head.
The two girls held their breath, clasping hands under the rugs.
"It's too lovely," murmured Amy. "What a splendid world ours is! Do you remember what Ruskin says—'Did you ever see one sunrise like another? Does not God vary His clouds for you every morning and every night?' Does He really—for us? Are you and I meant to enjoy this, Bee? And has nobody ever seen, and will nobody else ever see, just precisely what we are seeing now? Isn't it a perfectly extraordinary idea? Why, even a mile off—even half a mile off—it wouldn't be the same."
Bee did not answer at once. She could not so readily as Amy put her thoughts into words. After a pause she suggested—
"It makes one feel how small one's life is."