“Yes, a year ago we were here,” said Chayne.  The little square was thronged, the hotels and houses were bright with lights, and from here and from there music floated out upon the air, the light and lilting melodies of the day.  “Sylvia, you see the cafe down the street there by the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“A year ago, on just such a night as this, I sat with my guide, Michel Revailloud.  I was going to cross the Col Dolent on the morrow.  He had made his last ascent.  We were not very cheerful.  And he gave me as a parting present the one scrap of philosophy his life had taught him.  He said:  ’Take care that when the time comes for you to get old that you have some one to share your memories.  Take care that when you go home in the end, there shall be some one waiting in the room and the lamp lit against your coming.’”

Sylvia pressed against her side the hand which he had slipped through her arm.

“But he did more than give advice,” Chayne continued, “for as he went away to his home in the little village of Les Praz-Conduits, just across the fields, he passed Couttet’s Hotel and saw you under the lamp talking to a guide he knew.  You were making your arrangements to ascend the Charmoz.  But he dissuaded you.”

“Yes.”

“He convinced you that your first mountain should be the Aiguille d’Argentiere.  He gave you no doubt many reasons, but not the real one which he had in his thoughts.”

Sylvia looked at Chayne in surprise.

“He sent you to the Aiguille d’Argentiere, because he knew that so you and I would meet at the Pavilion de Lognan.”

“But he had never spoken to me until that night,” exclaimed Sylvia.

“Yet he had noticed you.  When I went up to fetch down my friend Lattery, you were standing on the hotel step.  You said to me, ‘I am sorry.’  Michel heard you speak, and that evening talked of you.  He had the thought that you and I were matched.”

Sylvia looked back to the night before her first ascent.  She pictured to herself the old guide coming down the narrow street and out of the darkness into the light of the lamp above the doorway.  She recalled how he had stopped at the sight of her, how cunningly he had spoken.  He had desired that her last step on to her first summit should bring to her eyes and soul a revelation which no length of after years could dim.  That was the argument, and it was just the argument which would prevail with her.

“So it was his doing,” she cried, with a laugh, and at once grew serious, dwelling, as lovers will, upon the small accident which had brought them together, and might so easily never have occurred.  An unknown guide speaks to her in a doorway, and lo! for her the world is changed, dark years come to an end, the pathway broadens to a road; she walks not alone.  Whatever the future may hold—­she walks not alone.  Suppose there had been no lamp above the doorway!  Suppose there had been a lamp and she not there!  Suppose the guide had passed five minutes sooner or five minutes later!