And as I spoke I knew that I was speaking to help my eyes from having to look. They held back from the night as if my body had shrunk from plunging with them down into a cold black sea.
“It might be another house, if all you saw was a light.”
“No, mother,” I spoke nervously, eager to answer every word that came lest the silence behind me push my eyes indeed into the blackness. “There is no other house.”
“There is one house on the mountain top,” said Mildred.
“No house could live upon the mountain side,” said Philip.
“Oh, what futile conversation,” mocked my mother. “Really, Doctor Stein, is this all your fault?”
“No house could live,” said Philip, “on the mountain side. And no man could hold to it.”
“He would fall back ere he had risen a single step.”
Doctor Stein soothed my mother: “Do not blame me, Mrs. Mark. And do not blame me, either, if someone asks next how we came here ... high up on the impassable mountain.”
Mother smiled and patted his fine hand: as much as to say “No, that foolish you are not, dear Doctor. That foolish none of us is.”