To right and left the gaze rested on snow-clad heights, rocky buttresses, sharp needles; all the fantastic wildness of bristling and icy arêtes; of rocky mountain-sides, seamed with gullies; of snowy mountain-sides, broken by outcrops of bare rock; of hanging glaciers, glittering in sunshine. Peak lay beyond peak; snow-field stretched beyond snow-field. To Doris this wonderful tableau brought a sense of joy; not gay delight, but solemn uplifting rapture. "It's beyond words," she said. "It is—sublime. But that doesn't explain. Words don't seem strong enough." "There are things that can only be felt, not said." "I think I meant that. It is the width—the greatness—the immensity! All earth and sky and heaven. Nothing small or puny. Don't you feel as if you didn't want ever to go back to the paltriness of everyday life?" "Is everyday life paltry?" "Compared with—" Her glance swept the scene. "Even compared with this. It all depends on what one lives for?" "You mean—doing things for other people. But they are such tiny things. This is so grand—so vast! It seems to lift up one's whole being." "If you were here always, the force of first impressions would fade. And that question would still push its way to the front." "The question—what one lives for—do you mean?" "Yes. Whether for Duty—or only for Self." A slight pause followed. "If only one's duties weren't so often just the very things one most dislikes!" A look in her companion's face somehow recalled her father. He asked simply— "Don't you think that the less one minds about one's own likings, the better? And after all,—obedience against the grain is always grander than doing what one wishes. That may land one on a mountain-top." "Yes—I see. I suppose—" and she smiled—"when you gave up your climb that day, for the sake of Mr. Ramsay, you really got to a higher peak than if you had gone up the Grand Muveran." He laughed. "Very kind of you to say so. But that was a simple necessity. Nothing else could have been possible." "And since then you've never been able to go, because you have been so busy, teaching me to climb." That some self-denial might be involved in this had not earlier occurred to her. She looked at him gratefully. "But anyhow—you have the work in life that you like. You are not one of those people who seem put down in just the wrong place. You wouldn't wish to change!" "It is the work I have to do. It was not my choice." "But how—Was it settled for you?" "Practically. My business now is to make the best of it. We can always learn to like what we have to do." "Can we?" The corners of her mouth curled rebelliously. "But I like to choose for myself. I like to be free." "Most of us do. But there's a higher standing than just personal freedom." "And the higher—?" she questioned. "Carrying out the will of another, against one's own will—because it is one's duty." "Carrying out—anybody's will!" "I meant, primarily—the Divine Will." She considered this soberly.