And she was delicious to skate with—­supple, sure, and light, fast as a man yet with the freedom of a child, sinuous and steady at the same time.  Her flexibility made him wonder, and when he asked where she had learned she murmured—­he caught the breath against his ear and recalled later that it was singularly cold—­that she could hardly tell, for she had been accustomed to the ice ever since she could remember.

But her face he never properly saw.  A muffler of white fur buried her neck to the ears, and her cap came over the eyes.  He only saw that she was young.  Nor could he gather her hotel or chalet, for she pointed vaguely, when he asked her, up the slopes.  “Just over there—­” she said, quickly taking his hand again.  He did not press her; no doubt she wished to hide her escapade.  And the touch of her hand thrilled him more than anything he could remember; even through his thick glove he felt the softness of that cold and delicate softness.

The clouds thickened over the mountains.  It grew darker.  They talked very little, and did not always skate together.  Often they separated, curving about in corners by themselves, but always coming together again in the centre of the rink; and when she left him thus Hibbert was conscious of—­yes, of missing her.  He found a peculiar satisfaction, almost a fascination, in skating by her side.  It was quite an adventure—­these two strangers with the ice and snow and night!

Midnight had long since sounded from the old church tower before they parted.  She gave the sign, and he skated quickly to the shed, meaning to find a seat and help her take her skates off.  Yet when he turned—­she had already gone.  He saw her slim figure gliding away across the snow ... and hurrying for the last time round the rink alone he searched in vain for the opening she had twice used in this curious way.

“How very queer!” he thought, referring to the wire netting.  “She must have lifted it and wriggled under ...!”

Wondering how in the world she managed it, what in the world had possessed him to be so free with her, and who in the world she was, he went up the steep slope to the post office and so to bed, her promise to come again another night still ringing delightfully in his ears.  And curious were the thoughts and sensations that accompanied him.  Most of all, perhaps, was the half suggestion of some dim memory that he had known this girl before, had met her somewhere, more—­that she knew him.  For in her voice—­a low, soft, windy little voice it was, tender and soothing for all its quiet coldness—­there lay some faint reminder of two others he had known, both long since gone:  the voice of the woman he had loved, and—­the voice of his mother.

But this time through his dreams there ran no clash of battle.  He was conscious, rather, of something cold and clinging that made him think of sifting snowflakes climbing slowly with entangling touch and thickness round his feet.  The snow, coming without noise, each flake so light and tiny none can mark the spot whereon it settles, yet the mass of it able to smother whole villages, wove through the very texture of his mind—­cold, bewildering, deadening effort with its clinging network of ten million feathery touches.