The leading guide kicked a step or two in the snow.  Then he used the adz of his ax.  A few steps still, and he halted.

“Ice,” he said, and from that spot to the mountain top he used the pick.

The slope was at a steep angle, the ice very hard, and each step had to be cut with care, especially on the traverse where the whole party moved across the mountain upon the same level, and there was no friendly hand above to give a pull upon the rope.  The slope ran steeply down beneath them, then curved over a brow and steepened yet more.

“Are the steps near enough together?” Chayne asked.

“Yes,” she replied, though she had to stretch in her stride.

And upon that Jean dug his pick in the slope at his side and turned round.

“Lean well way from the slope, mademoiselle, not toward it.  There is less chance then of slipping from the steps,” he said anxiously, and there came a look of surprise upon his face.  For he saw that already of her own thought she was standing straight in her steps, thrusting herself out from the slope by pressing the pick of her ax against it at the level of her waist.  And more than once thereafter Jean turned about and watched her with a growing perplexity.  Chayne looked to see whether her face showed any sign of fear.  On the contrary she was looking down that great sweep of ice with an actual exultation.  And it was not ignorance which allowed her to exult.  The evident anxiety of Chayne’s words, and the silence which since had fallen upon one and all were alone enough to assure her that here was serious work.  But she had been reading deeply of the Alps, and in all the histories of mountain exploits which she had read, of climbs up vertical cracks in sheer walls of rocks, balancings upon ridges sharp as a knife edge, crawlings over smooth slabs with nowhere to rest the feet or hands, it was the ice-slope which had most kindled her imagination.  The steep, smooth, long ice-slope, white upon the surface, grayish-green or even black where the ax had cut the step, the place where no slip must be made.  She had lain awake at nights listening to the roar of the streets beneath her window and picturing it, now sleeping in the sunlight, now enwreathed in mists which opened and showed still higher heights and still lower depths, now whipped angrily with winds which tore off the surface icicles and snow, and sent them swirling like smoke about the shoulders of the peak.  She had dreamed herself on to it, half shrinking, half eager, and now she was actually upon one and she felt no fear.  She could not but exult.

The sunlight was hot upon this face of the mountain; yet her feet grew cold, as she stood patiently in her steps, advancing slowly as the man before her moved.  Once as she stood, she moved her foot and scratched the sole of her boot on the ice to level a roughness in the step, and at once she saw Chayne and the guide in front drive the picks of their axes hard into the slope at their side and stand tense as if expecting a jerk upon the rope.  Afterward they both looked round at her, and seeing she was safe turned back again to their work, the guide cutting the steps, Chayne polishing them behind him.