to foreigners; our mountain clothes are not strange enough to
attract acute attention, though ill-made and shabby, no doubt, by
Utopian standards; we are dealt with as we might best wish to be
dealt with, that is to say as rather untidy, inconspicuous men. We
look about us and watch for hints and examples, and, indeed, get
through with the thing. And after our queer, yet not unpleasant,
dinner, in which we remark no meat figures, we go out of the house
for a breath of air and for quiet counsel one with another, and
there it is we discover those strange constellations overhead. It
comes to us then, clear and full, that our imagination has realised
itself; we dismiss quite finally a Rip-Van-Winkle fancy we have
entertained, all the unfamiliarities of our descent from the
mountain pass gather together into one fullness of conviction, and
we know, we know, we are in Utopia.

We wander under the trees by the main road, watching the dim
passers-by as though they were the phantoms of a dream. We say
little to one another. We turn aside into a little pathway and come
to a bridge over the turbulent Reuss, hurrying down towards the
Devil's Bridge in the gorge below. Far away over the Furka ridge a
pallid glow preludes the rising of the moon.

Two lovers pass us whispering, and we follow them with our eyes.
This Utopia has certainly preserved the fundamental freedom, to
love. And then a sweet-voiced bell from somewhere high up towards
Oberalp chimes two-and-twenty times.

I break the silence. "That might mean ten o'clock," I say.

My companion leans upon the bridge and looks down into the dim river