"Perhaps I will come," she added gravely.
Pale with joy, he stooped and suddenly clasped her hand and kissed it in an act of devotion and dedication. Nothing more was said. The brake full of girls and young men came up to them, who continued to chatter and laugh, emitting guttural exclamations, to conquer the desolate solemnity of the country through which they were passing, and up to them came the victoria where Annie Clarke and Gertrude Milner had drawn on their heavy fur capes, since the sky was now an immense pallor above the great valley rough with boulders and rocks, and the sun, that had become a spectral pallor over the naked, rude mountains, had made them feel cold. Everyone in carriage and on horseback sighed with relief as, making the last stretch of road, wooded like the avenue of an oasis in such an austere landscape, they smiled at the foaming, sounding, clamorous cascade that in a little gorge among the trees comes from the Bernina and penetrates underground, and further off reappears a torrent, and becomes lower down a river. After a few paces all had to descend.
A wooden bridge was the extreme limit for carriages and horses. To reach the glacier it was necessary to go on foot.
"Is it impossible for all to drive?" asked Gertrude Milner, very scandalised in her American dignity.
"Impossible, dearest Gertrude," replied Annie Clarke, shaking her head. "If you are tired we can stop at the restaurant."
"The glacier is very badly managed," murmured Miss Milner, offended in her habitual laziness and her American amour-propre.
"Very badly," agreed Mrs. Clarke, who never liked walking.
They began to walk slowly after the young people. The party walked rapidly, in couples and groups, Mabel far in advance of all, lifting over her arm the train of her riding habit, showing her slender little feet and some of her leg. Vittorio was beside her, not leaving her for a step. But in the frank sense of respect for another's liberty, which is one of the noblest things in American social life, none of the party bothered about them. Not even Mabel's mother seemed to be aware of the very open love-making, even in its correct form. Ellen and Norah West's mother had remained at Sils Maria, allowing her daughter, Ellen, to go alone with her fiancé Joe Wealther. Mrs. Gertrude Milner worried not at all about the flirtation of her daughter, Susy, with Pierre d'Alfort, the witty and amiable young Frenchman, who fascinated the girl by the originality of his boutades, and much less did she trouble herself about the flirtations of her niece, Rachel Rodd, with the Vicomte de Lynen, the Belgian, a troublesome and ever-deluded hunter after a big dowry, who even here was making a false move, for Rachel Rodd was very poor, with only a dowry of one hundred thousand dollars. At times the couples met and formed large groups, whence issued jokes and laughter, only to separate spontaneously and correctly. Only Mabel and Vittorio, who had dismounted, started off at a brisk walk, as if they did not wish to be overtaken; but no one followed hard on them, for they took care to keep the distance, and no one called after them. Suddenly, however, the party halted to look around.
The Morteratsch valley opened out on two sides, on which the mountain larches climb to a certain height, slender and brown, with supple branches; higher up the sides rose even more naked and less green, until quite high up they were delineated against the sky, to right and left, in massy profiles of dark rock. In the middle distance and the background, in gigantic, white, rugged, naked cliffs, in colossal undulations, that had been immovable for centuries and for centuries covered with snow, as hard as the rocks it hid, the glacier opened out, arose, advanced, and took up all the horizon; it advanced like an immense white wall, and then like an immense black wall, forward, forward, as if it were walking towards the onlooker, towards the rapt, ecstatic crowd in front—an immense peaked wall that seemed of rock but was really of ice. Three majestic peaks stood above it: on the left the Piz Bellavista, on the other side towards the left the Piz Morteratsch, and finally, very lofty, fearsome, and white without a scar or rent, the queen of mountains, the virgin of mountains—the Bernina.