He had followed her into the warm and cozy sitting room, and was warming his chilled fingers by the big log fire which burned on the hearth. "Can you ask? I came to see you." "And how are all the experiments going?" She turned him to another topic in some hurry. "There have been no experiments since last month; at least not the kind of experiments you mean. The one in which I have been engaged has been very successful." "And what was that?" she asked curiously. "I will tell you one of these days," he said. He was staying at the Hotel des Alpes, and hoped to be a week in Chamonix. They chatted about the weather, the early snow which had covered the valley in a mantle of white, about the tantalizing behavior of Mont Blanc, which had not been visible since May had arrived, of the early avalanches, which awakened her with their thunder on the night of her arrival, of the pleasant road to Argentieres, of the villages by the Col de Balme, which are buried in snow, of the sparkling, ethereal green of the great glacier--of everything save that which was nearest to their thoughts and to their hearts. Jasper broke the ice when he referred to Frank's visit to Geneva. "How did you know?" she asked, suddenly grave. "Somebody told me," he said casually. "Jasper, were you ever at Montreux?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye. "I have been to Montreux, or rather to Caux," he said. "That is the village on the mountain above, and one has to go through Montreux to reach it. Why did you ask?" A sudden chill had fallen upon her, which she did not shake off that day or the next. They made the usual excursions together, climbed up the wooded slopes of the Butte, and on the third morning after his arrival stood together in the clear dawn and watched the first pink rays of the sun striking the humped summit of Mont Blanc. "Isn't it glorious?" she whispered. He nodded. The serene beauty of it all, the purity, the majestic aloofness of mountains at once depressed and exalted her, brought her nearer to the sublimity of ancient truths, cleansed her of petty fears. She turned to him unexpectedly and asked: "Jasper, who killed John Minute?" He made no reply. His wistful eyes were fixed hungrily upon the glories of light and shade, of space, of inaccessibility, of purity, of coloring, of all that dawn upon Mont Blanc comprehended. When he spoke his voice was lowered to almost a whisper. "I know that the man who killed John Minute is alive and free," he said. "Who was he?" "If you do not know now, you may never know," he said. There was a silence which lasted for fully five minutes, and the crimson light upon the mountain top had paled to lemon yellow. Then she asked again: "Are you directly or indirectly guilty?" He shook his head. "Neither directly nor indirectly," he said shortly, and the next minute she was in his arms.