Katherine looked up at him with strange shyness. He had the power of evoking that which was sweetest and most womanly in her.
His arms were about her before the soundwave had passed his ear. A flood of burning words burst impatiently from his lips. She leant back her head, in the joy of surrender.
“I have loved you from the first--since last Christmas. You came to me as nothing else has ever come to me--brave and strong above all men.”
The words fell from her in a murmur strung to passion-pitch. One such radiant moment eclipsed the waste of grey years. She would have sold her soul for it.
“How great is your trust in me. Another than you might have reproached me for going--at such a time.”
She looked at him, her eyes and lips one smile.
“I can guess the reason. I honour you for it. I would not keep you. But oh! it will be long till I see you again.”
“And to me. I am not one of those to whom waiting is easy. But I take away all, all yourself with me.”
“Good-bye--Katherine,” he whispered. “You haye never called me by my name. Let me hear it from you.”
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.