"If I were a woman I don't think I would be an exacting one. I should only want people I--liked, to do things because they cared about me, otherwise favours would be of no value. We're pals, as you say, great pals, but if you don't care enough----" "Oh, hang it all, Kid, I'll give the thing up," I broke in, crossly. "I'll potter about with you and the Contessa in Chamounix, and take some nice, pretty, proper walks. But all the same, you're a little brute." "Do you hate me?" "Not precisely. But if I stop down here, Satan will certainly find mischief for my idle hands to do. I shall try to take your Contessa away from you, perhaps." "Oh, will you? Then I shall try to keep her; and we shall see which is the better man." He rose from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that I burst out laughing. "Come on," I said, "let's go and have a look round Chamounix, since there's no better sport to be had." So we strolled out of the _vaste parc avec chamois_ into the streets of the gay and charming little town, lying like a bright crystal at the foot of Mont Blanc. Round each of several big telescopes under striped canvas umbrellas, was collected a crowd. We could guess at what they were looking. "Shall we stop and see that piteous dark packet lying lonely on the snow?" I asked, pausing. But the Boy hurried on. "No, no," he said, "I should feel as if I had been spying on the dead through a keyhole. I want to buy something at the shops." "And I want to see the statue of Horace de Saussure, the first man who ever got to the top of Mont Blanc," said I, with reproachful meaning in my tone. The shops were almost as attractive as those of Lucerne, and gave an air of modernity and civilisation to the little place, which would have been out of the picture, had it not contrived to suggest the piquancy of contrast. The Boy spent a hundred francs for a silver chamois poised upon the apex of a perilous peak of uncut amethysts, mounted on ebony, and I was witty at the expense of his purchase, likening it to the white elephant of Instantaneous Breakfasts et Cie., which I had long ago cast behind me. "You will be throwing your chamois away in a day or two," I prophesied, "or sending it back to our landlord to add to his collection of animals." "You will see that I shan't throw it away," the Boy returned, and insisted upon carrying the parcel in his hand, instead of having it sent from the shop to the hotel. When we had learned something of the town we sauntered homeward; and seated in the _vaste parc_ with a novel and a red silk parasol, we found Gaetà. "Where have you been so early?" she asked. "To find a burnt-offering for your shrine," said the Boy; and tearing off the white wrappings, he gave her the silver chamois. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX The Little Rift within the Lute