The third run left her weary and satisfied. Again they were tramping back side by side, and although her experience of Russians had taught her that gratitude was out of place and enthusiasm over simple joys a matter for half-envious contempt, her thankfulness and felicity, involuntarily eloquent, treated him, marching tall and sombre at her side upon feet that in spite of the enormous boots showed themselves slender and shapely terminations of a well-hung frame, as if he had been of her own English stock; let him see the value, to herself, of his kindly gift. All she lived for now, she told him, was to rush, safe-guarded by a properly-mastered technique, at the utmost possible speed through this indescribable air, down slopes from which the landscape flew back and up. He smiled down, of course, the half incredulous smile. Of course bored, giving only part of a dreamy attention to all this raving. “_C’est bon pour la santé_,” he murmured as she paused. What did he know of santé, unless perhaps he had been in prison? He might be a refugee; an anarchist living in Switzerland. When he, too, turned out to be now returning in search of tea and they were climbing the slope towards Oberland, their toboggans colliding and bumping along as best they might at the ends of cords twisted together round the wrist of his gloveless hand, she remarked by way of relieving a silence he did not seem to think it necessary to break, that the Swiss winter must be less surprisingly beautiful to Russians than to the people of the misty north. He agreed that doubtless this was so and gloomily asked her if she had been in Russia. He agreed with everything she said about his country as seen from a distance, but without interest and presently, as if to change the subject, declared that he knew nothing of Russia and Russians. His voice sounded again too soon to give her time to select a nationality that should soften the disappointment of losing him as a Russian, and in a moment he was talking of Italy, and the Italy she knew by so many proxies dead and living was stricken out of her mind, to give place to the unknown Italy who had produced this man, simple and sincere, gloomy and harsh-minded, playing Chopin with all his heart. But when presently she learned that he was a business man on holiday from Milan, her Italy returned to her. He was from a world that everywhere was the same, a world that existed even within Italy. And at dinner again he sat apart wrapped in his gloom until again Vereker was rescuing him with speech and he was responding in the withheld, disclaiming Russian way.