The road was one of wild beauty.  It wound up a desolate mountain pass along which great black boulders were scattered haphazard like the mighty toys of a giant.  The glittering snow lay all around them, making their nakedness the more apparent.  And far, far above, the white crags shone with a dazzling purity in the sunlit air.

Below them the snow lay untrodden, exquisitely pure, piled here in great drifts, falling away there in wonderful curves and hollows, but always showing a surface perfect and undesecrated by any human touch.  And ever the sleigh ran smoothly on over the white road till it seemed to Dinah as if they moved in a dream.  She fell silent, charmed by the swift motion, and by the splendour around her.

“You are quite warm, I hope?” Scott said, after an interval.

She was wrapped in a fur cloak belonging to Isabel.  She smiled an affirmative, but she saw him as through a veil.  The mystery and the wonder of creation filled her soul.

“I feel,” she said, “I feel as if we were being taken up into heaven.”

“Oh, that we were!” said Isabel, speaking suddenly with a force that had in it something terrible.  “Do you see those golden peaks, sweetheart?  That is where I would be.  That is where the gates of Heaven open—­where the lost are found.”

Dinah’s hand was clasped in hers under the fur rug, and she felt the thin fingers close with a convulsive hold.

Scott leaned forward.  “Heaven is nearer to us than that, Isabel,” he said gently.

She looked at him for a moment, but her eyes at once passed beyond.  “No, no, Stumpy!  You never understand,” she said restlessly.  “I must reach the mountain-tops or die.  I am tired—­I am tired of my prison.  And I stifle in the valley—­I who have watched the sun rise and set from the very edge of the world.  Why did they take me away?  If I had only waited a little longer—­a little longer—­as he told me to wait!” Her voice suddenly vibrated with a craving that was passionate.  “He would have come with the next sunrise.  I always knew that the dawn would bring him back to me.  But”—­dull despair took the place of longing—­“they took me away, and the sun has never shone since.”

“Isabel!” Scott’s voice was very grave and quiet.  “Miss Bathurst will wonder what you mean.  Don’t forget her!”

Dinah pressed close to her friend’s side.  “Oh, but I do understand!” she said softly.  “And, dear Mrs. Everard, I wish I could help you.  But I think Mr. Studley must be right.  It is easier to get to heaven than to climb those mountain-peaks.  They are so very steep and far away.”

“So is Heaven, child,” said Isabel, with a sigh of great weariness.

As it were with reluctance, she again met the steady gaze of Scott’s eyes, and gradually her mood seemed to change.  Her brief animation dropped away from her; she became again passive, inert, save that she still seemed to be watching.