He picked up a pebble and sent it skipping down the mountain-side.
They were silent for a time. Then Honor said very timidly,
“It is good to be here with you, Zitli. I have learned things here that I shall never forget. The next time you have pain, perhaps you will remember that.”
The boy gave her a quick look of pleasure.
“_Merci, mademoiselle!_” he said. “I thank you from my heart.”
“I have never had a boy friend,” said Honor. “I should like very much to have you for a friend, Zitli. Will you have me?”
“And I,” he said, “have never had a friend of my own age at all. What happiness for me, mademoiselle! Friends then, is it not so?”
They shook hands gravely, and Honor drew a long breath of contentment.
“Since you are my friend, I can tell you my thoughts about the mountains. I could never tell anybody before.”
At fourteen, conditions establish themselves quickly, and become--to the fourteen-year-old mind--permanent. Honor had been a short week at the _Châlet des Rochers_, and it seemed her home; Vevay, the Pension Madeleine, the girls, even dear Madame Madeleine and Soeur Séraphine, were like a dream. A pleasant dream--some day, she supposed, she must go back, for a time at least; she was not yet old enough or strong enough to be a sennerin of the Alps, she realized that. How surprised they would be when she told them--
To the outward eye, on this beautiful June morning, Honor appeared an extremely pretty, red-haired child in a blue dress, curled up comfortably in the barn doorway with bright musing eyes looking out over the mountains. In reality--_her_ reality--she was a woman, tall, grave and beautiful, dressed in full Swiss costume, velvet bodice, embroidered apron, silver earrings and all the rest of it. She was receiving with dignified cordiality her former friends, the friends of her childhood: the Lady of Virelai with her lordly husband; Stephanie, Patricia and the rest; was answering their eager questions with simple grace and candor. Yes, she was happy, very, very happy. This was the life she had chosen. Gay cities had beckoned to her, throngs of knights and heroes bold had sighed to do her homage. “The mountains called me and I came. My brother Zitli and I dwell apart, in the sanctuary of Nature, at peace with all men!”