"Now, could it be anything else? You are not serious."
He laughed a little nervously.
"It would be a splendid thing to fly over the mountains, wouldn't it? If I have a spirit, I would sooner it played about here than in an old vault, as most of them do. Why, how it suggests power—power above men, doesn't it?"
And then almost with an apology:
"But I suppose you think all this is just nonsense? I'm not the kind of man who ought to be ambitious, am I? Everyone tells me that."
"But you do not lose your ambition because of them?"
He drew himself up—Benny could be a tower of dignity when he chose.
"Yes," he said, with real earnestness, "I am ambitious, and some day I shall attain my goal."
They walked a little way down the hillside in silence after that. There was no sign of Ian Kavanagh, who had taken a bad "toss" at the last of the bends above Andana and was trying to get the snow out of his hair at that very moment. Benny had a toboggan with him, but it was different from the others, much longer and made of steel. He trailed it behind him indifferently, thinking that his companion wished to walk down to the hotel; but when he discovered her own luge anchored in the snow he understood the situation.
"Halloa!" he said, "a derelict."