"It's almost like a warning," he thought, smiling. He drew his thick
coat tightly round the throat as the freezing air bit at him. "Those
warnings one reads of in stories sometimes ...!"

A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over the edge of the hills
across the valley rose the moon. He saw her silver sheet the world of
snow. Snow covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It smothered
houses, streets, and human beings. It smothered--life.




V


In the hall there was light and bustle; people were already arriving
from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many
wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking
"snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the
hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass
windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home
from the _cafe_ to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that conflict he
used to imagine. He laughed because it suddenly seemed so unreal. He
belonged so utterly to Nature and the mountains, and especially to those
desolate slopes where now the snow lay thick and fresh and sweet, that
there was no question of a conflict at all. The power of the newly
fallen snow had caught him, proving it without effort. Out there, upon
those lonely reaches of the moonlit ridges, the snow lay ready--masses
and masses of it--cool, soft, inviting. He longed for it. It awaited