‘“_Animæ dimidium meæ._” Yes, that is what she is,’ he said to himself as he sat in the summer darkness, with dreamy eyes looking upward to the lonely melancholy hills, where huge arollas of a thousand years’ growth spread their black branches against the snow-line just above them. What a desolate world it looked in the gathering gloom!—only a few solitary stars gleaming in the infinite remoteness of the sky, the moon not yet risen above yonder snowy battlements. It was past nine o’clock when they drove into the shrubberied approach to the Jungfraublich. The hotel looked dazzling after the obscurity of the valley. Daphne would have liked to dash into the billiard-room and challenge her lover to a game; but, since it was impossible for a young lady to play at a public table, she went upstairs to the sitting-room on the first floor, where Sir Vernon was waiting for them, and where there was a table spread with tea, cold chickens, and rolls and honey. Lina sat by her father, telling him the history of their day, and hearing all he had to say about his letters and papers. Edgar was in tremendous spirits, and inclined to make fun of the queer little village on the edge of everlasting snows; Daphne was talkative; Sir Vernon was gracious. It was only Gerald Goring who bore no part in the conversation. He looked worn and wearied with the day’s work, and yet it had been nothing for an Alpine climber; a mere constitutional walk, barely enough to keep a man in training. When tea was over he retired to the balcony, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and watching the moon climb the dark slopes of heaven; while the others looked over newly-arrived papers and periodicals, and discussed to-morrow’s trip to Grindelwald and the glaciers. The morning came, as fair and fresh a dawn as ever peeped shyly across the edge of the Alps, but Gerald, watching the slow kindling of that rosy glow after a sleepless night, greeted the new day with no thanksgiving. To him, in his present frame of mind, it would have seemed a good thing if that day had never dawned; if this planet Earth had dropped out of its place in the starry procession, and gone down to darkness and chaos, like a torch burnt out. He rose with that inexorable sun, which pursues his course with so little regard for the griefs and perplexities of humanity, and was out in the dewy woods above the hotel before civilised people were stirring. Anything was better than to lie on a sleepless couch staring at the light. Here, moving about among the dark pine-stems, treading the narrow tracks, shifting his point of view at every turn in the path, life was less intolerable. He could think better—his brain was clearer—his pulse less feverish.