“It wasn’t that, really,” replied the Boy.

“What, then?”

“Do you remember why I wanted to come over the Tete Noire?”

“To have the sensation of Mont Blanc suddenly bursting upon you.”

“Well, I—­to tell the truth, I had a whim—­just a whim, and nothing more—­to be with you and not with the Contessa when the time for that sensation should come.”

My heart warmed; but perhaps I was flattering myself unduly.  “You were afraid that her fascinations might overpower those of Mont Blanc, I suppose, whereas I am a mere stock or stone?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” replied he calmly.  But when the sensation did come, he caught my arm, with a quick-drawn breath, and no word following.

Our worship of other mountains had been a serving of false gods.  There was the one White Truth, dwarfing all else into insignificance; not a mere mountain, but a world of snow sailing moon-like in full sky.  It was, indeed, as if the moon, gleaming white and bathed in radiance, had come to pay Earth a visit.  Surely it would not stay; surely it was a secret that she had come, and we had found it out, just when this great dark rock-door through which we looked, opened by accident to show the sight.  But if it were a secret, there was no fear that we would ever tell it, for it soared beyond words.

The first glimpse gave this impression; afterwards we could not have recalled it if we had tried.  We grew used to the white Majesty which faced us, by-and-bye, as alas! one does grow used to beauty while one has it within reach of the eye.  But just as the Boy had begun to confess himself tired, and to lag in his walk, resting an arm on my shoulder, a new wonder came, like a draught of tonic wine.  Sunset, with King Midas’ touch, transformed the whole mountain to gold, so that it burned like a lamp to light the world, against a violet sky.  In the foreground was a low rampart of green mountain, down which poured a huge glacier like an arrested cataract.  It glimmered with a faint radiance, greenish-blue, and pale as the gleam of a glow-worm.  The violet of the sky deepened to amethyst-purple, and the snow on the waving line of mountains turned from gold to pink, as if there had been a sudden rain of rose leaves.

For a long time lasted the changing play of jewelled lights, and then the magic colour was swallowed at a gulp by the descending night.

Far away, and far down in the deep valley, the lights of Chamounix and its satellite villages sparkled like a troupe of fallen stars.  They lay in a bright heap, clustered together; and Innocentina, coming up with us at this moment, said that they were like raisins sunk together at the bottom of a pudding.  The late rain had set all the little torrents talking, and we were silent, listening to their gossip of the mountains’ secrets.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVIII