Remembering that of course she would speak without gaps, Miriam glanced at the possibility of pulling herself together for conversation. “I been pottering. My ski are at Zurbuchen’s bein’ repaired.” “But what a _perfect_ Swiss name. Like oak, like well-baked bread.” To get away now. Sufficient impression of the Alpenstock people perpetually strenuous, living for sport, and, redeeming its angularity, the rich Swiss background: Zurbuchen. But Mrs. Harcourt’s glance of surprised delight—there was amusement too, she didn’t think Swiss names worth considering—meant that she was entertained, anticipating further entertainment; to which she would not contribute. “No. I’m supposed to sit about and rest. Overwork.” “You won’t. Lots of people come out like vat. You’ll soon find resting a baw out heah.” “Should like a little sleep. I’ve had none for two nights.” “Stop in bed to-morrow. Have your meals up.” “Mm....” For a moment Mrs. Harcourt waited, silent, not making the movement of departure that would presently bring down the shadow of returning loneliness her words had drawn so near; keeping her leaning pose, her air of being indefinitely available. The deep bell of her voice dropped from its soft single note to a murmur rising and falling, a low narrative tone, hurrying. Through the sound still coming and going in her mind of the name Mrs. Harcourt had so casually spoken, bringing with it the sunlit mountains and the outer air waiting in to-morrow, Miriam heard that the people at the Alpenstock were all right—with the exception of the two sitting at dinner on Mrs. Harcourt’s left, “outsiders” of a kind now appearing in Oberland for the first time. Saddened by their exclusion, embarrassed by unconscious flattery, Miriam impulsively asked their name and glowed with a sudden vision of Mrs. Corrie, of how she would have embraced this opportunity for wicked mondaine wit. Mrs. Harcourt, for a moment obediently reflecting, said she had forgotten it but that it was somefing raver fwightful. Everyone else, introduced by name, received a few words of commendation—excepting the Russian and the American. The Russian would be just a foreigner, an unfortunate, but the American surely must be an outsider? Insincerely, as if in agreement with this division of humanity by exclusion, she put in a question, and while Mrs. Harcourt pulled up her discourse to say, as if sufficiently, that he was staying only a couple of days and passed on to summon other hotels to the tribunal, she was glad that the Russian had been left untouched. Harry Vereker, fine, a first-class sportsman and altogether nice chap, was already lessened, domesticated, general property in his niceness; but the Russian remained, wistfully alone: attractive. “.... hidjus big hotel only just built; all glass and glare. It’ll be the ruin of Oberland. No one’ll come here next year.”