“But you knew? You were no stranger to the Alps? I am beginning to understand that one cannot claim kinship with the high places until they stir the heart more in storm than in sunshine. When I saw all these giants glittering in the sun like knights in silver armor, I described them to myself as gloriously beautiful. Now I feel that they are more than that,—they are awful, pitiless in their indifference to frail mortals; they carry me into a dim region where life and death are terms without meaning.”
“Yes, that is the true spirit of the mountains. I too used to look on them with affectionate reverence, and you recall the old days. Perhaps, if I am deemed worthy, you will teach me the cult once more.”
He bent closer. Helen became conscious that in her enthusiasm she had spoken unguardedly. She moved away, slightly but unmistakably, a step or two out into the open, for the hut on that side was not exposed to the bitter violence of the wind.
“It is absurd to imagine us in a change of rôle,” she cried. “I should play the poorest travesty of Mentor to your Telemachus. Oh! What is that?”
While she was speaking, another blinding flare of lightning flooded moraine and glacier and pierced the veil of sleet. Her voice rose almost to a shriek. Bower sprang forward. His left hand rested reassuringly across her shoulders.
“Better come inside the hut,” he began.
“But I saw someone—a white face—staring at me down there!”
“It is possible. There is no cause for fear. A party may have crossed from Italy. There would be none from the Maloja at this hour.”
Helen was actually trembling. Bower drew her a little nearer. He himself was unnerved, a prey to wilder emotions than she could guess till later days brought a fuller understanding. It was a mad trick of fate that threw the girl into his embrace just then, for another far-flung sheet of fire revealed to her terrified vision the figures of Spencer and Stampa on the rocks beneath. With brutal candor, the same flash showed her nestling close to Bower. For some reason, she shuddered. Though the merciful gloom of the next few seconds restored her faculties, her face and neck were aflame. She almost felt that she had been detected in some fault. Her confusion was not lessened by hearing a muttered curse from her companion. Careless of the stinging sleet, she leaped down to a broad tier of rock below the plateau of the hut and cried shrilly:
“Is that really you, Mr. Spencer?”