'Yes, Phil, and who'd have thought to find you trapped under the snow?'
The men of the party urged immediate movement to restore circulation. Philip's hand, when dropped by Lambert, was seized again and held tightly, but he had lost feeling in it. Nor could he see clearly; he was dazzled by the light—the brilliance of the moon and the glare of the snow—after the darkness below.
'Who is that laughing?' he asked suddenly.
'Oh—Miss Durham,' answered Lambert.
'And—who is that crying?'
A whisper in his ear—'It is I—Salome.'
CHAPTER XLIX.
TÊTE-À-TÊTE.
Philip passed a night of pain and fever. He was bruised and shaken. His hands had been scarified in the slide down the rubble, and when circulation returned in them they bled. The exposure to cold had affected him, and he ached in every joint; his skin was as though red-hot plates had been passed over it. He could not sleep, for if he dropped out of consciousness it was into mental fear that he was falling down a precipice into the vortex of an unseen torrent, and he woke with a start that sent a thrill of torture through his strained nerves. He could not get the roar of the water out of his ears; he had carried it away with him in his head. Salome, at his request, to dispel it played the jingling piano in the salle underneath his room, but that was powerless to dissipate it. Then he sent his request to Miss Durham to sing. Perhaps her splendid voice might drive away the delusion. Her answer was that she had no voice. No voice! He knew that she had; she had boasted to him of it. He sent another message. Then came back the reply that she could not, and would not, sing to such a detestable little instrument as that in the salle.
Next day Philip was obliged to keep his bed. He was in discomfort and pain, and not the best of tempers.