He smiled invincibly.  “How do you know?”

She tapped her breast lightly with her jewel-encrusted hand.  “From myself.  Oh, how I have hated life since I came here, but now I love it again, I want it.”  She threw wide her arms and smiled radiantly, but not at him, rather at the vision of life her imagination conjured.  “I want to dance, dance, dance, I want to live.”

“And you will dance for us here in the mountains before you go away?” he asked, with interest.  “Good dancing is very rare and very beautiful.  There are very few great dancers.”

“Yes, only a few,” she said briefly.  He could not know that she was one of them, of course, but nevertheless it piqued her vanity that he did not divine it or take it for granted.  She resolved then and there to show him how she could dance, and as she decided this, a subtle, wicked smile crept about her lips.  Since he was so sure that he would never return to the world, the world should come to him.

“But you haven’t said yet that you would dance for us,” he said.

“Yes,” the same smile still lingering in her eyes and on her lips, “yes, I will.  The camp have sent half a dozen invitations for me to do so, through Hughie.  They have a dance once a week in the town hall, don’t they?  When is the next one?”

“I think I heard Hughie say next Thursday night.  He always helps out the orchestra when he is here, doesn’t he?”

Next Thursday night!  Her eyes widened.  That was the evening of the day that Rudolf was coming.  Perhaps—­perhaps, he would stay over and see her, it was not much of a risk he would be taking in doing so.  Her father would not go down to see her dance, he would prefer to sit over his cards with Jose, and no one else knew Hanson.  Oh, what a prospect!  She almost clapped her hands with joy.

The wind sent a shower of pine needles over them, and Seagreave looked up, scanning the sky with a keen glance.  “It will soon be time for the snow to fly,” he said.

She looked at him incredulously.  “Why, it is mild as summer.”

“Yes, but this is October, and October in the mountains.  Perhaps in only a few days now the ground will all be covered with snow.”

“I hope I shall be away before that time,” shivering a little.

“But think what you will miss.  Think how beautiful it will be; all still, just a great, white silence; the snow with its wonderful shadows, and sometimes, when the air is very clear, I seem to hear the chiming of great bells.”

She shivered again and rose.  “I don’t believe I’d like it,” she said.  “I think it would frighten me.”