From that point till the glacier was reached the climb was laboriously simple. There was no difficulty and not the slightest risk, even for a child; but the heavy gradient and the rarefied air made it almost impossible to sustain a conversation unless the speakers dawdled. Helen often found herself many yards in advance of the others. She simply could not help breasting the steeper portions of the track. She was drawn forward by an intense eagerness to begin the real business of the day. Bower did not seek to restrain her. He thought her high spirits admirable, and his gaze dwelt appreciatively on her graceful poise as she stopped on the crest of some small ravine and looked back at the plodders beneath. Attractive at all times, she was bewitching that morning to a man who prided himself on his athletic tastes. She wore a white knitted jersey and a short skirt, a costume seemingly devised to reveal the lines of a slender waist and supple limbs. A white Tam o' Shanter was tied firmly over her glossy brown hair with a silk motor veil, and the stout boots which she had surveyed so ruefully when Bower brought them to her on the previous evening after interviewing the village shoemaker, were by no means so cumbrous in use as her unaccustomed eyes had deemed them. Even the phlegmatic guide was stirred to gruff appreciation when he saw her vault on to a large flat boulder in order to examine an iron cross that surmounted it. "_Ach, Gott!_" he grunted, "that Englishwoman is as surefooted as a chamois." But Helen had found a name and a date on a triangular strip of metal attached to the cross. "Why has this memorial been placed here?" she asked. Bower appealed to Barth; but he shook his head. Karl gave details. "A man fell on the Cima del Largo. They carried him here, and he died on that rock." "Poor fellow!" Some of the joyous light left Helen's face. She had passed the cross before, and had regarded it as one of the votive offerings so common by the wayside in Catholic countries, knowing that in this part of Switzerland the Italian element predominated among the peasants. "We get a fine view of the Cima del Largo from the _cabane_," said Bower unconcernedly. Helen picked a little blue flower that nestled at the base of the rock. She pinned it to her jersey without comment. Sometimes the callousness of a man was helpful, and the shadow of a bygone tragedy was out of keeping with the glow of this delightful valley.