The night was already late, a pungent cold, with breezes that seemed like powerful, icy gasps crossed the silent Engadine country. The pure night air was rendered quite white by the lofty brilliance of the moon, suspended over the lake like a lamp in mid-sky. Meanwhile the mountains around, far and near, were becoming obscure and gloomy with shadows, and even higher and more majestic in the gloom those that the moon did not touch and illuminate, while the opposite shores of the lake, untouched by the moon's rays, grew gloomy; in the middle its waters, touched by the moon, were scintillating. All the lake of St. Moritz, in fact, seemed like a strange cup of peculiar liquid, black and fearsome towards the deserted shores, beneath the shadow of the mountains, brilliant as a cold, metallic liquid in the middle; a fantastic cup containing intoxication and death on the cold summer night in the high mountains. Like night and moon the silence was supreme and everything seemed motionless. Up above a few scattered lights pointed the way from the station to the baths, but no human shadow passed there. Down below at the baths rarer and feebler light flickered now and then, if a too impetuously cold breeze reached them. In an opaque, almost spiritual, whiteness the eternal snow appeared high above, in the night, on the strange Piz Languard; pure and spectral it appeared amidst the deep folds of Monte Corvatsch, and pale as a phantom on the far-off horizon between the two peaks of the Margna. Their souls trembling with an immense sensibility, their hearts palpitating with an immense tenderness, were struck, seized, and conquered by the majesty and purity of things in the presence of the mountains that for centuries have seen time and life pass away; in the presence of the motionless glaciers that no sun's rays could dissolve, and the waters black as shadows or white as the moon. Side by side, they felt their hearts lifted above every little transient, paltry entanglement by so much power, beauty, and nobility; they felt that their hearts were breaking old bonds, and that the secret of their spirit was more intense, profound, and overpowering. They felt that here was the master whom nothing could any longer resist, and that no longer could they lie or remain silent. Sweetly Lucio bent over her and sweetly he drew her to him with a light fleeting action, as he brushed the fair hair on her forehead with his lips.