my part.  I had come to hate it, but the thing was done, and it had been a fairly difficult thing to do.  It was impossible not to plume oneself a little on the whole, but the feeling was a superficial one, with deeper and uneasier feelings underneath.  Still, I had practically redeemed my impulsive promise to Catherine Evers; her son and this woman once parted, it should be easy to keep them apart, and my knowledge of the woman forbade me to deny the fullest significance to her departure.  She had gone away to stay away—­from Bob.  She had listened to me the less with her ears, because her reason and her heart had been compelled to heed.  To be sure, she saw the unsuitability, the impossibility, as clearly as we did.  But it was I who, at all events, had helped to make her see it; wherefore I deserved well of Catherine Evers, if of no other person in the world.

Oddly enough, this last consideration afforded me least satisfaction; it seemed to bring home to me by force of contrast the poor figure that I must assuredly cut in the eyes of the other two, the still poorer opinion that they would have of me if ever they knew all.  I did not care to pursue this train of thought.  It was a subject upon which I was not prepared to examine myself; to change it, I thought of Bob’s present peril, which I had almost forgotten as I lounged abstractedly in the empty hall.  If anything were to happen to him, in the vulgar sense!  What an irony, what poetic punishment for us survivors!  And yet, even as I rehearsed the ghastly climax in my mind, I told myself that the mother would rather see him even thus, than married to a widow who had also been divorced; it was the younger woman who would never forgive me, or herself.

Disappointed faces met me on my next visit to the veranda.  The little crowd there had dwindled to a group.  I could have had the telescope now for as long as I liked:  the upper part of the Matterhorn was finally and utterly effaced and swallowed up by dense white mist and cloud.  My friend the mountaineer looked grave, but his disfigured face did not wear the baulked expression of others to which he drew my attention.

“It is like the curtain coming down with the man’s head still in the lion’s mouth,” said he.

“I hope,” said I devoutly, “that you don’t seriously think there’s any analogy?”

The climber looked at me steadily, and then smiled.

“Well, no, perhaps I don’t think it quite so bad as all that.  But it’s no use pretending it isn’t dangerous.  May I ask if you know who the foolhardy fellow is?”

I said I did not know, but mentioned my suspicion, only begging my climbing friend not to let the name go any farther.  It was in too many mouths already, in quite another connection, I was going on to explain; but the mountaineer nodded, as much as to warn me that even he knew all about that.  It was Bob’s office, however, to provide the hotel with its sensation while he remained, and he was not allowed to perform