The words laid hold upon Chayne's imagination and fixed her in his memories. He knew nothing of her really, except just this one curious fact. She dreamed of running water. Somehow it was fitting that she should. There was a kind of resemblance; running water was, in a way, an image of her. She seemed in her nature to be as clear and fresh; yet she was as elusive; and when she laughed, her laugh had a music as light and free. She went into the chalet. Through the window Chayne saw her strike a match and hold it to the candle. She stood for a moment looking out at him gravely, with the light shining upward upon her young face. Then a smile hesitated upon her lips and slowly took possession of her cheeks and eyes. She turned and went into her room. CHAPTER VII THE AIGUILLE D'ARGENTIÈRE Chayne smoked another pipe alone and then walking to the end of the little terrace looked down on to the glistening field of ice below. Along that side of the chalet no light was burning. Was she listening? Was she asleep? The pity which had been kindled within him grew as he thought upon her. To-morrow she would be going back to a life she clearly hated. On the whole he came to the conclusion that the world might have been better organized. He lit his candle and went to bed, and it seemed that not five minutes had passed before one of his guides knocked upon his door. When he came into the living-room Sylvia Thesiger was already breakfasting. "Did you sleep?" he asked. "I was too excited," she answered. "But I am not tired"; and certainly there was no trace of fatigue in her appearance. They started at half past one and went up behind the hut. The stars shimmered overhead in a dark and cloudless sky. The night was still; as yet there was no sign of dawn. The great rock cliffs of the Chardonnet across the glacier and the towering ice-slopes of the Aiguille Verte beneath which they passed were all hidden in darkness. They might have been walking on some desolate plain of stones flat from horizon to horizon. They walked in single file, Jean leading with a lighted lantern in his hand, so that Sylvia, who followed next, might pick her way amongst the boulders. Thus they marched for two hours along the left bank of the glacier and then descended on to ice. They went forward partly on moraine, partly on ice at the foot of the crags of the Aiguille Verte. And gradually the darkness thinned. Dim masses of black rock began to loom high overhead, and to all seeming very far away. The sky paled, the dim masses of rock drew near about the climbers, and over the steep walls, the light flowed into the white basin of the glacier as though from every quarter of the sky. Sylvia stopped and Chayne came up with her. "Well?" he asked; and as he saw her face his thoughts were suddenly swept back to the morning when the beauty of the ice-world was for the first time vouchsafed to him. He seemed to recapture the fine emotion of that moment.