“Are you tired?” he asked. “Would you rather not skate any more just now?” She gave him an amused look. “I am never tired,” she said. “I could skate for ever, if it were not, like all things, certain to become monotonous. And I’m sure it’s very good of you to skate with a woman ‘of mature years’ when there are so many nice girls about.” “You are the prettiest ‘girl’ here,” he answered, with a smile. “Everyone says so!” “And what do you say to everyone?” she demanded. “I agree. Naturally!” He took her hand, and together they started skimming easily over the ice, now shining like polished crystal in the radiance of the moon and the light thrown from torches set round the expanse of the skating ground by the hotel purveyors of pleasure for their visitors. Diana’s lightness and grace of movement had from the first been the subject of admiring comment in the little world of humanity, gathered for the season on those Swiss mountain heights, but this evening she seemed to surpass herself, and, with Dimitrius, executed wonderful steps and “figures” at flying speed with the ease of a bird on the wing. Men looked on in glum annoyance that Dimitrius should have so much of her company, and women eyed her with scarcely concealed jealousy. But at the end of an hour she said she had “had enough of it,” and pulling off her skates she walked with a kind of sedate submissiveness beside Dimitrius away from the gay scene on the ice back to the hotel. Their way led through an avenue of pine trees, which, stiffly uplifting their spear-like points to the frosty skies and bright moon, looked like fantastic giant sentinels on guard for the night. Stopping abruptly in the midst of the eerie winter stillness she said suddenly: “Dr. Féodor, do you know I’ve had three proposals of marriage since I’ve been here?” He smiled indulgently. “Ay, indeed! I’m not surprised! And you have refused them all?” “Of course! What’s the good of them?” His dark eyes glittered questioningly upon her through their veiling, sleepy lids. “The good of them? Well, really, that is for you to decide! If you want a husband----” “I don’t!” she said, emphatically, with a decisive little stamp of her foot on the frozen ground. “I should hate him!” “Unhappy wretch! Why?” “Oh, because!”--she hesitated, then laughed--“because he would be always about! He’d have the right to go with me everywhere--such a bore!” “Love----” began Dimitrius, sententiously. “Love!” She flashed a look of utter scorn upon him. “You don’t believe in it--neither do I! What have we to do with love?” “Nothing!” he agreed, quietly. “But--you are really rewarding my studies, Diana! You are growing very pretty!” She turned from him with a gesture of offended impatience and walked on. He caught up to her. “You don’t like my telling you that?” he said. “No. Because the ‘prettiness’ is your forced product. It’s not _my_ natural output.” He seized her hand somewhat roughly and held it as in a vice.