Stewart thought so, too.  He got up with a great show of stretching and yawning and lounged into the passage.  He did not speak to the girl; Marie noted that with some comfort.  But shortly after she saw him conversing easily with a male member of the party.  Her heart sank again.  Life was moving very fast for Marie Jedlicka that afternoon on the train.

Stewart was duly presented to the party of Americans and offered his own cards, bowing from the waist and clicking his heels together, a German custom he had picked up.  The girl was impressed; Marie saw that.  When they drew into the station at Semmering Stewart helped the American party off first and then came back for Marie.  Less keen eyes than the little Austrian’s would have seen his nervous anxiety to escape attention, once they were out of the train and moving toward the gate of the station.  He stopped to light a cigarette, he put down the hand-luggage and picked it up again, as though it weighed heavily, whereas it was both small and light.  He loitered through the gate and paused to exchange a word with the gateman.

The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh and well up the mountainside before Stewart and Marie were seated side by side in a straw-lined sledge, their luggage about them, a robe over their knees, and a noisy driver high above them on the driving-seat.  Stewart spoke to her then, the first time for half an hour.

Marie found some comfort.  The villas at Semmering were scattered wide over the mountain breast, set in dense clumps of evergreens, hidden from the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated by valleys.  One might live in one part of Semmering for a month and never suspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads and paths for days and never pass twice over the same one.  The Herr Doktor might not see the American girl again—­and if he did!  Did he not see American girls wherever he went?

The sleigh climbed on.  It seemed they would never stop climbing.  Below in the valley twilight already reigned, a twilight of blue shadows, of cows with bells wandering home over frosty fields, of houses with dark faces that opened an eye of lamplight as one looked.

Across the valley and far above—­Marie pointed without words.  Her small heart was very full.  Greater than she had ever dreamed it, steeper, more beautiful, more deadly, and crowned with its sunset hue of rose was the Rax.  Even Stewart lost his look of irritation as he gazed with her.  He reached over and covered both her hands with his large one under the robe.

The sleigh climbed steadily.  Marie Jedlicka, in a sort of ecstasy, leaned back and watched the mountain; its crown faded from rose to gold, from gold to purple with a thread of black.  There was a shadow on the side that looked like a cross.  Marie stopped the sleigh at a wayside shrine, and getting out knelt to say a prayer for the travelers who had died on the Rax.  They had taken a room at a small villa where board was cheap, and where the guests were usually Germans of the thriftier sort from Bavaria.  Both the season and the modest character of the establishment promised them quiet and seclusion.