“All.”
“Good-bye—Katherine,” he whispered. “You haye never called me by my name. Let me hear it from you.”
“Raine!”
Again their lips met. In another moment he was speeding to catch the diligence. She went on to the balcony, kissed both hands to him as he turned the corner. Then she went slowly back up the stairs, holding by the hand-rail, and shaken with joy and fear.
When Raine arrived at Chamonix, instead of finding Rogers and his party at the Hotel Royale as he had expected, he found a telegram awaiting him.
“Accident to Bryce. Party broken up. Letter to follow.”
On inquiring of the manager, Raine learned that his telegram of the day before had been forwarded on to Rogers to Courmayeur, whence the latter had written to the hotel countermanding the rooms he had ordered. And by the next post came a letter giving details of the accident. Bryce had slipped down a crevasse and injured himself, perhaps fatally. All thoughts of further climbing were abandoned. Raine was somewhat shocked at the news. He did not know Bryce, who was a Cambridge friend of the junior Dean's, but he was sincerely concerned at the tragic end of the expedition.
The point, however, that touched him practically was that he found himself stranded at Chamonix. He eagerly scanned the long table-d'hote in the hope of discovering a familiar face. But not one was visible. He was alone in that crowded resort which only exists as a rallying point for excursionists and climbers. The sole distraction the place afforded were glaciers which he derived little interest in contemplating, and peaks which he had not the remotest desire to scale. It would have been different, if he had met a cheerful party. He had bargained with himself for their society. It was part of the contract. Now that he was forced to depend on the Alps alone for companionship, he felt aggrieved, and began to dislike them cordially. The notion, however, of going on solitary mountaineering excursions entirely against his will, appealed to his sense of humour.
“The relations between us are simply ridiculous,” he said, apostrophizing the mighty snow-clad pile.
But as there was no help for it, he prepared, like Mahomet, to go the mountain cheerfully. So he secured a guide to the Tête Noire for the following day.