Clara’s look certainly could not have been the result of any excess of imagination. But many women respond easily to influences they could not have originated. My conjecture is that the same horror had again seized upon Charley when he saw Clara; that it made his face, already deathlike, tenfold more fearful; that Clara took fright at his fear, her imagination opening like a crystal to the polarized light of reflected feeling; and thus they stood in the paralysis of a dismay which ever multiplied itself in the opposed mirrors of their countenances. I too was in terror--for Charley, and certainly wasted no time in speculation. I went forward instantly, and put an arm round each. They woke up, as it were, and tried to laugh. But the laugh was worse than the stare. I hurried them out of the place. We came upon Mr Coningham round the next corner, amusing himself with the talk of the half-silly guide. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘Out again,’ I answered. ‘The air is oppressive.’ ‘Nonsense!’ he said merrily. ‘The air is as pure as it is cold. Come, Clara; I want to explore the penetralia of this temple of Isis.’ I believe he intended a pun. Clara turned with him; Charley and I went out into the sunshine. ‘You should not have gone, Charley. You have caught a chill again,’ I said. ‘No, nothing of the sort,’ he answered. ‘Only it was too dreadful. That lovely face! To see it like that--and know that is what it is coming to!’ ‘You looked as horrid yourself,’ I returned. ‘I don’t doubt it. We all did. But why?’ ‘Why, just because of the blueness,’ I answered. ‘Yes--the blueness, no doubt. That was all. But there it was, you know.’ Clara came out smiling. All her horror had vanished. I was looking into the hole as she turned the last corner. When she first appeared, her face was ‘like one that hath been seven days drowned;’ but as she advanced, the decay thinned, and the life grew, until at last she stepped from the mouth of the sepulchre in all the glow of her merry youth. It was a dumb show of the resurrection. As we went back to the inn, Clara, who was walking in front with her father, turned her head and addressed me suddenly. ‘You see it was all a sham, Wilfrid!’ she said. ‘What was a sham? I don’t know what you mean,’ I rejoined. ‘Why that,’ she returned, pointing with her hand. Then addressing her father, ‘Isn’t that the Eiger,’ she asked--‘the same we rode under yesterday?’ ‘To be sure it is,’ he answered. She turned again to me. ‘You see it is all a sham! Last night it pretended to be on the very edge of the road and hanging over our heads at an awful height. Now it has gone a long way back, is not so very high, and certainly does not hang over. I ought not to have been satisfied with that precipice. It took me in.’