course, and she, that abject whom you beheld recently renouncing me, is,
you will see, the young Aurora she was when she came striking at my door
on the upper Alp. That was a morning! That morning is Clotilde till my
eyes turn over! She is all young heaven and the mountains for me! She's
the filmy light above the mountains that weds white snow and sky. By the
way, I dreamt last night she was half a woman, half a tree, and her hair
was like a dead yewbough, which is as you know of a brown burnt-out
colour, suitable to the popular conception of widows. She stood, and
whatever turning you took, you struck back on her. Whether my widow, I
can't say: she must first be my wife. Oh, for tomorrow!'

'What sort of evening is it?' said the baroness.

'A Mont Blanc evening: I saw him as I came along,' Alvan replied, and
seized his hat to be out to look on the sovereign mountain again. They
touched hands. He promised to call in the forenoon next day.

'Be cool,' she counselled him.

'Oh!' He flung back his head, making light of the crisis. 'After all,
it's only a girl. But, you know, what I set myself to win! . . . The
thing's too small--I have been at such pains about it that I should be
ridiculous if I allowed myself to be beaten. There is no other reason
for the trouble we 're at, except that, as I have said a thousand times,
she suits me. No man can be cooler than I.'

'Keep so,' said the baroness.

He walked to where the strenuous blue lake, finding outlet, propels a
shoulder, like a bright-muscled athlete in action, and makes the Rhone-