She saw her lover flinch, his face grow white, his eyes stare in horror.  And she wondered.  For her the little town, overtopped by its tumbled glittering fields of snow and tall rock spires was a place apart.  She cherished it in her memories, keeping clear and distinct the windings of its streets, where they narrowed, where they broadened into open spaces; yet all the while her thoughts transformed it, and made of its mere stones and bricks a tiny city magical with light and grace.  For while she stayed in it her happiness had dawned and she saw it always roseate with that dawn.  It seemed to her that plots and thoughts of harm could there hardly outlive one starlit night, one sunlit day.  Had she mapped out her father’s itinerary, thither and nowhere else would she have sent him.

“You are afraid?” she asked.  “Hilary, why?”

Chayne did not answer her question.  He was minded to spare her, even as she had spared him.  He talked of other things until the restaurant grew empty and the waiters began to turn out the lights as a hint to these two determined loiterers.  Then in the darkness, for now there was but one light left, and that at a little distance from their table, Chayne leaned forward and turning to Sylvia, as they sat side by side: 

“You have been happy to-night?”

“Very,” she answered, and there was a thrill of joyousness in her clear, low voice, as though her heart sang within her.  Her eyes rested on his with pride.  “No man could quite understand,” she said.

“Well then, why should we wait longer, Sylvia?” he said.  “We have waited long enough, my dear.  We have after all no one but ourselves to please.  I should like our marriage to take place as soon as possible.”

Sylvia answered him without affectation.

“I, too,” she whispered.

“To-morrow then!  I’ll get a special license to-morrow morning, and make the arrangements.  We can go away together at once.”

Sylvia smiled, and the smile deepened into a laugh.

“Where shall we go, Hilary?” she cried.  “To some perfect place.”

“To Chamonix,” he answered.  “That was where we first met.  There could be no better place.  We can just go and tell your father what we have done and then go up into the hills.”

It was well done.  He spoke without wakening Sylvia’s suspicions.  She had never understood the episode of the lighted window; she did not know that her father was Gabriel Strood, of whose exploits in the Alps she had read; she believed that all danger to Walter Hine was past.  Chayne on the other hand knew that hardly at any time could Hine have stood in greater peril.  To Chamonix he must go; and to Chamonix he must take Sylvia too.  For by the time when he could reach Chamonix, he might already be too late.  There might be publicity, inquiries, and for Garratt Skinner ruin, and worse than ruin.  Would Sylvia let her lover share the dishonor of her name?  He knew very surely she would not.  Therefore he would have the marriage.