"I loathe them too--"

He stopped. The girl had suddenly come quite close. A breath of ice
passed through his very soul. She had touched him.

"But this awful cold!" he cried out, sharply, "this freezing cold that
takes me. The wind is rising; it's a wind of ice. Come, let us turn ...!"

But when he plunged forward to hold her, or at least to look, the girl
was gone again. And something in the way she stood there a few feet
beyond, and stared down into his eyes so steadfastly in silence, made
him shiver. The moonlight was behind her, but in some odd way he could
not focus sight upon her face, although so close. The gleam of eyes he
caught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy as though he looked
beyond her--out into space....

The sound of the church bell came up faintly from the valley far below,
and he counted the strokes--five. A sudden, curious weakness seized him
as he listened. Deep within it was, deadly yet somehow sweet, and hard
to resist. He felt like sinking down upon the snow and lying there....
They had been climbing for five hours.... It was, of course, the warning
of complete exhaustion.

With a great effort he fought and overcame it. It passed away as
suddenly as it came.

"We'll turn," he said with a decision he hardly felt. "It will be dawn
before we reach the village again. Come at once. It's time for home."