The paths that led to Maurice's dwelling-place were tolerably steep, and in some places the snow was soft, in others the frost made the paths slippery; therefore during their walk Maurice and Arthur were too much engrossed with the one necessity of keeping their footing to find much breath for conversation. But they were both good walkers and strong, stalwart men; therefore, although they had started comparatively late in the morning, the sun had not dropped behind the mountains that shut in the valley before they were seated in Maurice's little room, a jug of whisky punch between them, and on the table the white bread and the meat with which Maurice had taken care to provide himself before leaving the hotel that morning.
They found everything in first-rate order. On the previous day Marie and her little grandchild had arrived. The stove had been kept alight all night, according to Karl's strict orders, lest the books and manuscripts should suffer from the damp, and the old woman had just finished a general cleaning up when her master and his visitor arrived.
The dinner was certainly plain, but the two Englishmen did justice to it—Arthur perhaps appreciating it all the more for the absence of any suspicious-looking entrées.
"What do you think?" said Maurice when they both paused at last from sheer exhaustion. "This is a very rough place; can you manage to put up with it for a night or two? If so, I will undertake to show you some of the finest points of view in the Alps, seeing which at this season, you know, will render you for all the future a respectable traveller."
Arthur laughed: "Put up with it! I should just think so. I never saw anything so delightfully primitive. I quite envy you your little snuggery."
A sad smile played round Maurice's lips, it softened his face marvellously: "I am scarcely a person to envy, and yet this had been my dream for many a long day. I thought it would make me happy."
There was a bitter ring, a kind of irony of self, in the last words. He looked out meditatively over the snow. "Men are strangely constituted," he continued sadly; "the dream and hope of to-day are the weariness and disgust of to-morrow." He turned to his young companion: "People will always insist upon buying their own experience at any cost, or else I should prove to you, as a lesson that I have painfully gained, how foolish it is to set one's heart too much on anything under the sun. 'Light come, light go;' if we hold to our possessions lightly, the loss of them grieves us little. I see in your eyes that my philosophy is repugnant."
For Arthur read all Maurice's cynicism in the light of his history. His face flushed. "Depth of feeling is never wasted," he said earnestly; "I ought to know that."
Maurice had cleared away the remnants of their simple meal. They were sitting, one on each side of the small stove, discussing some famous cigars, a stock of which Arthur always had on hand.
His remark made Maurice turn round to him suddenly: "That's rather a deep doctrine for one of your age; but it reminds me you were to tell me something to prove that Solomon, who professed, by the bye, to understand human nature, was altogether wrong in that impolite statement of his about women. Stop, let me see! I drank rather too much last night; still, I don't think I am wrong."