“How beautiful! How beautiful!” she murmured. “It is a dream-colour, but I never dreamed anything half so lovely.” He could hardly get her along. She wanted to stop at every second step to gloat on some fresh wonder. But they came at last, by slow degrees, to the point, just below the Belvédère, where sturdy pedestrians can drop from the main road into the valley and so avoid the tedious winding-ways. “We’ll get down here, if you think you can manage it,” said Ray. “Then we can get right up to the glacier-foot where the Rhone comes out. It’s worth seeing, but it’s a bit of a scramble down unless they’ve improved the path.” “I’ll manage it all right if you’ll go first and show me the way.” So they started on that somewhat precarious descent, and had gone but a little way when Ray began to be sorry he had not stuck to the solider footing of the road. For the apology of a path had in places disappeared entirely under the attrition of the wet season and many heavy boots. Whole lumps of it had slipped away and left gaps and slides down which a rough-clad Switzer might flounder with possible impunity, but which suggested serious possibilities to the ordinary traveller. He had gone on hoping it would improve, but it did not. Instead it grew worse. But if falling down such awkward slides was no easy matter, re-climbing them to gain the high road was next to impossible. They bumped and slipped and floundered downwards as best they could. “I’m truly sorry,” he said, as he helped her down one specially awkward place. “It was nothing like this last time I came.” “It’s all right,” she laughed. “It’s fun--all in the day’s work. Don’t tumble right out of sight if you can help it.” And then he did. A lump of rock to which he had trusted his foot came squawking out of the wet bank, and he and it went down together a good half-dozen yards. He brought up with his rucksac over his head and turned at once to see to her safety. “All right,” he shouted. “No bones broken. But I don’t advise you to try it. Strike to the right and try and find a better place. Throw me down your rucksac and cloak, then you’ll be free-er.” She dropped them down to him, with a startled look on her face, and he scrambled round, as well as he could so laden, to meet her round the corner. But she had to make quite a long détour before she came at last on another and less precarious path and was at last able to join him. “Sure you weren’t hurt?” she asked anxiously. “Quite sure. Bit scraped, that’s all. I suppose it’s the rains that have boggled the path so. Now, if we keep on round here we’ll be able to get right up to the ice-cave where the stream comes out. Here’s the rain on again. Better put that cloak on,” and they scrambled on over the rough detritus from the glacier and the hillsides till they reached the ice-foot, and stood looking into the weird blue-green hollow out of which the gray glacier water came rushing as though in haste to find a more congenial atmosphere.