The Schwester run had been in unexpectedly good order, and Sybil did not get back to the hotel till late in the afternoon. The weather had cleared since noon, and about twilight the curtain of clouds had been dispersed, the south wind had ceased, and the splendid frosty stars again hung embroidered on the velvet of the night. Instead of plunging through the snow, before they reached the hotel their footsteps went crisply on the crackly crust, and the steel runners of their trailing toboggans sang like tea-kettles as they slid over the re-frozen surface. Already her spirits had been high, and, with the increased exhilaration of the air, they rose to nonsense point. 'Climate, climate,' she was saying--'how is it that people worship money and brains and beauty, and never worship climate, which is the one thing in the world that matters? Of course, you don't think that, because you live in New York, which is unbearable three-quarters of the year and intolerable the rest--isn't that it?--and get accustomed to doing without climate, just as you train oysters to live out of water until you are ready to eat them. But to me nothing but climate is really of any importance. I am so much better than when I came here; and I was quite well when I came,' she added. 'It seems to have suited Charlie Brancepeth very well,' said Bilton. 'Yes, he's much better; soon he'll be quite well. He gets more like you, Mr. Bilton, as he regains his health, every day. It really is very odd, because I don't suppose two people were ever so unlike in character. But the climate here has been good for your character as well as Charlie's lungs.' 'Have I improved? I'm delighted to hear it. I thought I was a hopeless case.' 'Not at all--no more hopeless than Charlie. You have developed a side your character which I hardly suspected you of having, and are beginning to take perfectly frivolous pursuits with great seriousness. You were much more annoyed at losing ten seconds to-day in that spill than you were at losing your cigarette-case.' 'I have been a pupil, that's all,' he said; 'I have been well taught since I have been here.' '_Tanti complimenti_,' said she. 'Really, when you came I was afraid you would be absorbed in telegrams and bargains and bulls and bears. But you have not; you have played very nicely. How much longer do you stop?' They had come to the hotel, and were passing the big squares of light cast by the hall windows. He dropped the rope of his toboggan as she asked this, and stopped to pick it up, looking her full in the face.