We spent all day in sightseeing, and had another moonlight evening on the loggia.  We were great pals now, Boy and I. I had never met anyone in the least like him.  At one moment he was a human boy, almost a child; at another his brain leaped beyond mine, and he became a poet or a philosopher; again he was an elfin sprite, a creature for whom Puck was the one thinkable name.  There was a single thing only, about which you could always be sure.  He would never be twice the same.

Still, though we were friends, “Boy” and “Man” we remained.  He kept his name a secret, and he had forbidden me to mention mine.  Nor had he spoken of his route or destination, after Aosta.  As to this I was curious, for I knew now that it would be a wrench to part with the strange little being whose ears I had tingled to box three days (or was it three years?) ago.  Already he had done me good; and though I had hardly reached the point of confessing as much to myself, as a plain matter of fact I would not have exchanged his quaint companionship for that of my lost love.  How she would have hated this idyllic Arcadia!  How triste she would have been; how weary after a day’s tour among relics of past ages; and how much she would have preferred Bond Street to the Arch of Augustus, or the park to our snow mountains and green valley!  Even Davos she would have found intolerable had it not been for the tobogganing, the dances and the theatricals, in all of which she had played a leading part.  Deep down in the darkest corner of my soul, I now knew that I would not have fallen in love with Helen Blantock had I first met her in Aosta.

The Boy and I agreed that our head waiter was one of the nicest men we had ever met, and when he pledged his personal honour that a day’s wandering among neighbouring castles would be “very repaying,” we determined to bolt the five he most recommended in one gulp, on our second and last afternoon.  If he could, he would have sent us spinning like teetotums from one concentric ring of historic chateaux to another, until goodness knows how far from Aosta, Finois, Souris, and Fanny-anny, we should have ended.  He would also have despatched us on a two or three days’ excursion to Courmayeur; and I fear that his respect for us went down like mercury in a chilled thermometer, when he understood that we had not come to the country to do any of the famous climbs.  He named so many, dear to the hearts of my Alpine Club acquaintances, that it would have taken us well into the new year to accomplish half; and he accepted with mild, disapproving resignation our fiat that there were other parts of the world worth seeing.

As we had to cover a radius of many miles, in our rounds of visits at the few sample chateaux we had selected from the waiter’s list, we decided to spare our legs and those of the animals.  It was hardly playing the game we had set out to play—­we two strangely-met friends—­to amble conventionally from show-house to show-house, in a carriage, with guide-books in our hands, like everyday tourists; nevertheless, we did this unworthy thing.  Perhaps, therefore, I deserved the punishment which fell upon me.