The track through the wood, wide and level for a while with pointed pines marching symmetrically by, narrowed to a winding path that took her in amongst them, into their strange close fellowship that left each one a perfect thing apart. Not lonely, nor, for all the high-bulging smoothness of snow in which it stood, cold. It was their secret, pine-breath, that brought a sense of warm life, and their close-clustered needles. Out on the mountain-sides they looked black and bleak, striving towards the sun until they were stayed by the upper cold. Seen close they were a happy company bearing light upon the green burnish of their needles and the dull live tints of their rough stems. And very secret; here thought was sheltered as in a quiet room. Out in the immense landscape, in the down-pouring brilliance of pure light, thought was visible. Transparent to the mountains who took its measure and judged, yet without wounding, and even while they made it seem of no account, a small intricate buzzing in the presence of mighty, simple statement sounding just out of reach within the air, and invited thoughtless submission to their influence as to a final infinite good that would remain when they were no more seen, there was pathos in their magnificence; as if they were glad even of one small observing speck, and displayed gently the death they could deal, and smiled in their terrifying power as if over an open secret. And to walk and walk on and on amongst them, along their sunlit corridors with thought shut off and being changed, coming back refreshed and changed and indifferent, was what most deeply she now wanted of them. The track climbed a ridge and there below were the American’s wide snowfields. Before she was assured by the doffed cap outheld while he made his salutation—the sweeping foreign _coup de chapeau_ that was so decisive a politesse compared to the Englishman’s meagre small lift; and yet also insolent—she was rejoicing in the certainty that the bearded figure in spite of the English Norfolk suit and tweed cap, was the big Russian. He alone, at this moment, of all the people in the hotel would be welcome. Remote, near and friendly as the deepest of her thoughts, and so far away from social conventions and the assumptions behind conventions, as to leave all the loveliness about her unchanged—and yet trailing an absurd little toboggan, smaller, and, in contrast with his height, more ridiculous an appendage than her own. He plunged down the ridge in the English style, by weight and rather clumsily, and in a moment was by her side at the head of the run that went, pure white and evenly flattened, switch-backing away across the field out of sight.