"Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was an awkward place. Remember, you can't be too careful on a mountain." "Well!" she said again, "I thought I should be killed; I thought of everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me-- about my being found--and Florella--" "Yes," said Guy, "one does think, in such moments, of the dearest." Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and neck down to her very finger-tips. Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face. "If I had been killed, there'd have been an end of me to all intents and purposes. I don't care for anything that _could_ go on. Oh, I don't mean anything about opinions; but there _couldn't_ be anything afterwards that's real to _me_. There couldn't be anything that _I_ want." "You have found that out," said Guy. "I never thought about God at all," she said abruptly. "He never came into my head!" "Well, He has come now," said Guy. She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts. "Well," she cried again, "if I didn't believe in Him, I'd have stood to it, and not been afraid. But I do--I always have--and yet I just forgot Him--then." "But not now," said Guy. "I think I ought to take you back," he added; "you ought to rest, and recover yourself." "I'll go back," she said, standing up. "But I'm quite well." She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again. "You've been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and leave off everything would be--horrid?" "No," he answered. "For one thing, when I've been in danger, I've been too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face--destruction. And certainly there is something beyond it." She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel. "I'm awfully obliged to you," she said, in girlish speech, but in a deeply moved voice. "You'll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly." Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together. PART THREE, CHAPTER EIGHT. MR VAN BRUNT. There was a little commotion in front of the verandah, caused by some new arrivals, as Guy and Constancy approached it from the side. A stout lady in a bonnet and a handsome travelling-cloak, came up the steps, looked round her, and made a sudden rush towards them. "My dear Guy! Oh, what a delightful surprise! I never was so glad to see any one. After all these months, it is indeed a relief to see some one of the family." And Mrs Joshua Palmer seized Guy's hands, and all but embraced him; a ceremony he had carefully avoided from his earliest childhood. "Why, Cousin Susan! I didn't know you were still abroad. I'm very glad to see you," he said, astonished at this effusive greeting. "And Miss Vyner? How do you do, my love? Well, Guy, and how are you? and is _dear_ Godfrey here too? Jeanie, Jeanie, here's your cousin."