"I can't go on any longer like this," she said, slowly. "I can't, mother. If my father won't have me, I must see what I can do. Of course, I can't do much. I don't know anything. But I am too unhappy here. I cannot endure the life we are living without a home or--respect,--" Sylvia had not meant to use that word. But it had slipped out before she was aware. She broke off and turned her eyes again to her mother. They were very bright, for the moonlight glistened upon tears. But the softness had gone from her mother's face. She had grown in a moment hard, and her voice rang hard as she asked: "Why do you think that your father and I parted? Come, let me hear!" Sylvia turned her head away. "I don't think about it," she said, gently. "I don't want to think about it. I just think that he left you, because you did not keep step either." "Oh, he left me? Not I him? Then why does he write to me?" The voice was growing harder with every word. "I suppose because he is kind"; and at that simple explanation Sylvia's mother laughed with a bitter amusement. Sylvia sat scraping the gravel with her slipper. "Don't do that!" cried her mother, irritably. Then she asked suddenly a question which startled her daughter. "Did you meet any one last night on the mountain, at the inn?" Sylvia's face colored, but the moonlight hid the change. "Yes," she said. "A man?" "Yes." "Who was it?" "A Captain Chayne. He was at the hotel all last week. It was his friend who was killed on the Glacier des Nantillons." "Were you alone at the inn, you and he?" "Yes." "Did he know your father?" Sylvia stared at her mother. "I don't know. I suppose not. How should he?" "It's not impossible," replied Mrs. Thesiger. Then she leaned on the table. "It was he who put these ideas into your head about going away, about leaving me." She made an accusation rather than put a question, and made it angrily. "No, mother," Sylvia replied. "He never spoke of you. The ideas have been growing in my mind for a long time, and to-day--" She raised her head, and turning slightly, looked up to where just behind her the ice-peaks of the Aiguilles du Midi and de Blaitière soared into the moonlit sky. "To-day the end came. I became certain that I must go away. I am very sorry, mother." "The message of the mountains!" said her mother with a sneer, and Sylvia answered quietly: "Yes." "Very well," said Mrs. Thesiger. She had been deeply stung by her daughter's words, by her wish to go, and if she delayed her consent, it was chiefly through a hankering to punish Sylvia. But the thought came to her that she would punish Sylvia more completely if she let her go. She smiled cruelly as she looked at the girl's pure and gentle face. And, after all, she herself would be free--free from Sylvia's unconscious rivalry, free from the competition of her freshness and her youth, free from the grave criticism of her eyes.