“Ah!  Now, mademoiselle, I know who it is you remind me of.  I have been watching you.  I know now.”

She looked up.

“Who is it?”

“An English gentleman I once climbed with for a whole season many years ago.  A great climber, mademoiselle!  Captain Chayne will know his name.  Gabriel Strood.”

“Gabriel Strood!” she cried, and then she laughed.  “I too know his name.  You are flattering me, Jean.”

But Jean would not admit it.

“I am not, mademoiselle,” he insisted.  “I do not say you have his skill—­how should you?  But there are certain movements, certain neat ways of putting the hands and feet.  Yes, mademoiselle, you remind me of him.”

Sylvia thought no more of his words at the moment.  They reached the lateral glacier, descended it and crossed the Glacier d’Argentiere.  They found their stone-encumbered pathway of the morning and at three o’clock stood once more upon the platform in front of the Pavillon de Lognan.  Then she rested for a while, saying very little.

“You are tired?” he said.

“No,” she replied.  “But this day has made a great difference to me.”

Her guides approached her and she said no more upon the point.  But Chayne had no doubt that she was referring to that decision which she had taken on the summit of the peak.  She stood up to go.

“You stay here to-night?” she said.

“Yes.”

“You cross the Col Dolent to-morrow?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him quickly and then away.

“You will be careful?  In the shadow there?”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a moment or two, looking up the glacier toward the Aiguille d’Argentiere.

“I thank you very much for coming with me,” and again the humility in her voice, as of one outside the door, touched and hurt him.  “I am very grateful,” and here a smile lightened her grave face, “and I am rather proud!”

“You came up to Lognan at a good time for me,” he answered, as they shook hands.  “I shall cross the Col Dolent with a better heart to-morrow.”

They shook hands, and he asked: 

“Shall I see no more of you?”

“That is as you will,” she replied, simply.

“I should like to.  In Paris, perhaps, or wherever you are likely to be.  I am on leave now for some months.”

She thought for a second or two.  Then she said: 

“If you will give me your address, I will write to you.  I think I shall be in England.”

“I live in Sussex, on the South Downs.”

She took his card, and as she turned away she pointed to the Aiguille d’Argentiere.

“I shall dream of that to-night.”

“Surely not,” he replied, laughing down to her over the wooden balustrade.  “You will dream of running water.”

She glanced up at him in surprise that he should have remembered this strange quality of hers.  Then she turned away and went down to the pine woods and the village of Les Tines.