"What news of Estelle?" Winn asked indifferently. "None particularly. She doesn't like Peter's language. My people seem to have taken to him rather, and I hear he's picked up parts of the Governor's vocabulary. It'll be jolly hearing him talk; he couldn't when I left. Estelle's taken up religion. It's funny, my mother said she would, before we were married. My mother's got a pretty strong head; Estelle hasn't, she was keen about the Tango when I left; but I dare say religion's better for her; hers is the high church kind. Up there is the valley--funny sort of place; it'll remind you of the hills--that's one reason why I brought you out here--that and the hotel being like a fly paper. Davos is like all the places where our sort of people go--fashion or disease--it don't matter a penny which--they're all over the place itself, in and out of each other's pockets, and yet get a mile or two out and nobody's in sight. Funny how people like each other. I don't like 'em, you know. I hate 'em." In the early February afternoon the valley lay before them singularly still and white. There were no fir-trees on the sides of the abrupt snow slopes, and it took Winn some time to rediscover a faint pathway half blotted out by recent snow. A few minutes later the road behind them vanished, everything dropped away from them but the snow, and the low gray skies. A tiny wind slipped along the valley; it was strange not to see it, for it felt like the push of a Presence, in the breathless solitude. A long way off Lionel could hear a faint noise like the sound of some one choking. It reminded him of the sound behind the green baize doors in the hotel. It was just such a sound, suppressed, faint, but quite audible, that he heard along the passages at night. He looked questioningly at Winn. "That's a waterfall," said Winn; "most of it's frozen up but it leaks through a little. There's a story about this place--I didn't mention it to you before, did I?" Lionel shook his head. Winn was not in the habit of telling him stories about places. He had informed Lionel on one occasion some years ago, that he thought legends too fanciful, unless they were in the Bible, which was probably true, and none of our business. But Lionel had already wondered if this change in Winn wasn't on the whole making him more fanciful.