"Would you be happy with her?"
"Yes, if I were another man."
For a long stretch of road they said nothing more. By one of those very rapid changes, that in the high mountains astonish by their violence or their intense sweetness, the night sky had become as clear as crystal: the air had become so limpid that great distances could be clearly distinguished by the moon's rays. A rustling, cold, refreshing breeze came from afar, ruffling the waters of the lake; but behind them, very far-away, there was a mass of black clouds which they did not turn round to look at. On that summer night the noble, solitary mountains pencilled themselves in great precise lines, whose virgin snows threw a whiteness upon the lakes and the large woods and spinneys which skirted their waters, forming beneath the light of the moon many peninsulas and little promontories, and upon the immense meadows, where amidst the soft green grass coursed brooks and little torrents with gentle singing; also upon the villages seized by slumber, with little barred windows upon whose sills tiny rose plants, geraniums, and gentians slept in floral slumber.
On high, amidst the dark green of the last spinney, the bright turrets of the Villa Storey pointed to the accomplishment of their journey. The two gentlemen, who had almost reached the end of their long drive, tired and bruised of limb, exalted by their deep, mutual striving, and by having confessed, almost unconsciously, how great was the pitiable and fatal essence of their lot, and exalted by a singular increase of their life, by the solemnity of the solitary night, the immense, austere, yet persuasive silence that surrounded them, by that pacifying light, and by the presence of a beauty—the simplicity and purity of which they perceived, almost without thinking about it—desired, yes, desired a new heart, a new soul, and another destiny. They desired that nothing of what had happened to them should happen again, that all the past should vanish, that everything should change—persons, sentiments, deeds. For an instant strongly did they desire this—for an instant!
The rocky banks of the Inn were in front of them, and their carriage bumped up and down on the small wooden bridge that spans the noisy little river at the entrance of St. Moritz Bad. Around them were little white houses; on the banks amidst the trees the church spires dominating the heights, and the imposing hotels upon which fluttered to the cold mountain breeze the red flag with white cross. Up above on a small hill was the village of St. Moritz Dorf, all white beneath the moon.
Every pure, fine, pious desire vanished in a trice. They remembered them no more and became the men of old, of always. Their nerves and senses were anxiously stretched out to pleasure, to luxury, to caprice; and they were bitten by a pungent curiosity for new joys, new loves, new fantasies—to last an hour, a day, a month, then afterwards suddenly to be forgotten.
CHAPTER II
Smiling softly and showing her little flashing teeth, in a mouth as red as a carnation and whimsically opened, Mabel Clarke was counting with the point of her umbrella the boxes on the truck—large boxes of yellow or maroon leather, either long and soft or high and massive, with shining brass clasps and locks, and long stripes painted a vivid white and red, upon which was described a large red "C." Standing beneath the roof of the pretty little station of Coire, amongst the crowd that surged, as it waited from minute to minute the departure of the Engadine Express, Mabel Clarke, tall, slender, upright, in her pearl-grey, tailor-made dress, which outlined all her youthful grace, not wanting in a certain expression of robustness and strength, watched the porters who were placing their boxes in the train. She counted up to eighteen, of all forms and dimensions, with the great clamorous "C" in blood red.
"Eighteen," she exclaimed, turning round. "Eighteen, isn't that so, dear Broughton?"