After another plodding silence, the prospector’s hail reached them again.  It seemed farther off, and this time Morganstein did not respond.  He stopped, however, and the woman beside him waited in expectation.  “Suppose,” he said slowly, “we are lost on this mountain to-night.  Make a difference to-morrow—­wouldn’t it?—­whether you would marry me or not.”

The color rushed to her face and went; her breast rose and fell in deep, quick breaths, but she met his look fearlessly, lifting herself with the swaying movement from the balls of her feet that made her suddenly taller.  “No.”  And her tone, the way in which she said it, must have stung even his small soul; then she added:  “You are more brutal than I thought.”

She turned after that and herself sent the belated response to Banks.  But though she repeated the call twice, making a trumpet of her hands and with all the power of her voice, his hail did not reach them again.  She started swiftly down.  It was beginning to snow.

Frederic had nothing more to say.  He moved on with her.  It was as though each tried to out-travel the other, still they could not make up that delay.  The snow fell in big, soft flakes that blurred the tracks they followed; soon they were completely blotted out, and though he strained his eyes continually, watching for the cleaver of rock they had climbed that morning, the landmark never appeared.  Finally, at the same instant, they both stopped, listening.  On the silence broke innumerable small sounds like many little hurrying feet.  The mountain trembled slightly.  “God Almighty!” he cried thickly.  Then came the closer rush of a considerable body, not unlike sheep passing in a fog, and panic seized him.  “We’ve got to keep on top,” he shouted and, grasping her arm, he swung her around and began to run back up the slope.

In the face of this common peril, personality called a truce, and she pushed on with him blindly, leaving it to him to choose the way and set the pace.  But their own tracks down the incline had filled with incredible swiftness; soon they were completely effaced.  And, when the noise subsided, he stopped and looked about him, bewildered.  He saw nothing but a breadth of sharply dipping slope, white, smooth as an unwritten scroll, over which hung the swaying, voluminous veil of the falling snow.  He put his hands to his mouth then, and lifted his voice in a great hail.  It brought no reply, but in the moment he waited, somewhere far below in those obscured depths, a great tree, splitting under tremendous pressure, crashed down, then quickly the terrific sweep and roar of a second mightier avalanche filled the hidden gorge.

Morganstein caught her arm once more.  “We must get back to that shoulder where it’s safe,” he shouted.  “Banks will come to look us up.”  After that, as they struggled on up the slope, he fell to saying over and over, as long as the reverberations lasted:  “Almighty God!”