smoke-grey muzzles.  Even the feel in the air was new, that delicious crisp burning warmth that lay so lightly as it were on the surface of frozen stillness; and the special sweetness of all places at the foot of mountains—­ scent of pine-gum, burning larch-wood, and all the meadow flowers and grasses.  But newest of all was the feeling within him—­a sort of pride, a sense of importance, a queer exhilaration at being alone with her, chosen companion of one so beautiful.

They passed all the other pilgrims bound the same way—­stout square Germans with their coats slung through straps, who trailed behind them heavy alpenstocks, carried greenish bags, and marched stolidly at a pace that never varied, growling, as Anna and the boy went by:  “Aber eilen ist nichts!”

But those two could not go fast enough to keep pace with their spirits.  This was no real climb—­just a training walk to the top of the Nuvolau; and they were up before noon, and soon again descending, very hungry.  When they entered the little dining-room of the Cinque Torre Hutte, they found it occupied by a party of English people, eating omelettes, who looked at Anna with faint signs of recognition, but did not cease talking in voices that all had a certain half-languid precision, a slight but brisk pinching of sounds, as if determined not to tolerate a drawl, and yet to have one.  Most of them had field-glasses slung round them, and cameras were dotted here and there about the room.  Their faces were not really much alike, but they all had a peculiar drooping smile, and a particular lift of the eyebrows, that made them seem reproductions of a single type.  Their teeth, too, for the most part were a little prominent, as though the drooping of their mouths had forced them forward.  They were eating as people eat who distrust the lower senses, preferring not to be compelled to taste or smell.

“From our hotel,” whispered Anna; and, ordering red wine and schnitzels, she and the boy sat down.  The lady who seemed in command of the English party inquired now how Mr. Stormer was—­he was not laid up, she hoped.  No?  Only lazy?  Indeed!  He was a great climber, she believed.  It seemed to the boy that this lady somehow did not quite approve of them.  The talk was all maintained between her, a gentleman with a crumpled collar and puggaree, and a short thick-set grey-bearded man in a dark Norfolk jacket.  If any of the younger members of the party spoke, the remark was received with an arch lifting of the brows, and drooping of the lids, as who should say:  “Ah!  Very promising!”

“Nothing in my life has given me greater pain than to observe the aptitude of human nature for becoming crystallized.”  It was the lady in command who spoke, and all the young people swayed their faces up and down, as if assenting.  How like they were, the boy thought, to guinea-fowl, with their small heads and sloping shoulders and speckly grey coats!