‘This light is false. We have an hour yet before the true dawn,’ he heard the younger man say lightly. ‘The summits still are ghostly. Let us enjoy the sensation, and see what we can make of it.’ And Limasson, looking up startled from his reverie, saw that the far-away heights and towers indeed were heavy with shadow, faint still with the light of stars. It seemed to him they bowed their awful heads and that their stupendous shoulders lowered. They drew together, shutting out the world. ‘True,’ said his companion, ‘and the upper snows still wear the spectral shine of night. But let us now move faster, for we travel very light. The sensations you propose will but delay and weaken us.’ He handed a share of the burdens to his companion and to Limasson. Slowly they all moved forward, and the mountains shut them in. And two things Limasson noted then, as he shouldered his heavier pack and led the way: first, that he suddenly knew their destination though its purpose still lay hidden; and, secondly, that the porter’s leaving before the ascent proper began signified finally that ordinary climbing was not their real objective. Also--the dawn was a lifting of inner veils from off his mind, rather than a brightening of the visible earth due to the nearing sun. Thick darkness, indeed, draped this enormous, lonely amphitheatre where they moved. ‘You lead us well,’ said the priest a few feet behind him, as he picked his way unfalteringly among the boulders and the streams. ‘Strange that I do so,’ replied Limasson in a low tone, ‘for the way is new to me, and the darkness grows instead of lessening.’ The language seemed hardly of his choosing. He spoke and walked as in a dream. Far in the rear the voice of the younger man called plaintively after them: ‘You go so fast, I can’t keep up with you,’ and again he stumbled and dropped his ice-axe among the rocks. He seemed for ever stooping to drink the icy water, or clambering off the trail to test the patches of snow as to quality and depth. ‘You’re missing all the excitement,’ he cried repeatedly. ‘There are a hundred pleasures and sensations by the way.’ They paused a moment for him to overtake them; he came up panting and exhausted, making remarks about the fading stars, the wind upon the heights, new routes he longed to try up dangerous couloirs, about everything, it seemed, except the work in hand. There was eagerness in him, the kind of excitement that saps energy and wastes the nervous force, threatening a probable collapse before the arduous object is attained. ‘Keep to the thing in hand,’ replied the priest sternly. ‘We are not really going fast; it is you who are scattering yourself to no purpose. It wears us all. We must husband our resources,’ and he pointed significantly to the pyramid of the Tour du Néant that gleamed above them at an incredible altitude.