through the valley, and out of it.

L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths,
where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over
their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward
gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden
rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide
chance to show you the pierced rock of the Aiguille du Midi?

SIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and
it rained all Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva again,
early on Wednesday morning.

L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline
manner, by inner consciousness: but you might have seen the
pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not
that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-
edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as
by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven
thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it,
or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there's
just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond
Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than
the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may
drive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on
the other side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been
through.

SIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down,
and think of it.