was--this sudden craving for the heights with her, at least for open
spaces where the snow lay thick and fresh--it was too imperious to be
denied. He does not remember going up to his room, putting the sweater
over his evening clothes, and getting into the fur gauntlet gloves and
the helmet cap of wool. Most certainly he has no recollection of
fastening on his ski; he must have done it automatically. Some faculty
of normal observation was in abeyance, as it were. His mind was out
beyond the village--out with the snowy mountains and the moon.

Henri Defago, putting up the shutters over his _cafe_ windows, saw him
pass, and wondered mildly: "Un monsieur qui fait du ski a cette heure!
Il est Anglais, done ...!" He shrugged his shoulders, as though a man had
the right to choose his own way of death. And Marthe Perotti, the
hunchback wife of the shoemaker, looking by chance from her window,
caught his figure moving swiftly up the road. She had other thoughts,
for she knew and believed the old traditions of the witches and
snow-beings that steal the souls of men. She had even heard, 'twas said,
the dreaded "synagogue" pass roaring down the street at night, and now,
as then, she hid her eyes. "They've called to him ... and he must go,"
she murmured, making the sign of the cross.

But no one sought to stop him. Hibbert recalls only a single incident
until he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her along the
fringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a bewildering
frieze of fantastic shadows. And the incident was simply this--that he
remembered passing the church. Catching the outline of its tower against
the stars, he was aware of a faint sense of hesitation. A vague
uneasiness came and went--jarred unpleasantly across the flow of his
excited feelings, chilling exhilaration. He caught the instant's
discord, dismissed it, and--passed on. The seduction of the snow