Growing weary of their inexhaustible theme—of waiting for the emergence of some sign of consciousness of the passing moment, a dropping of references backwards or forwards, that would leave them in league together, there as individuals—she pressed them for personal impressions of the adventure in its own right, the movement into strangeness, the being off the chain of accustomed things. They grew vague, lost interest and fell presently into a silence from which she pulled them by an enquiry about the plait. In the midst of the story of the plait and just as some people were being pointed out who still thought them three sisters, two with their hair up, and one with a plait who did not appear at dinner, came a longing to escape, the sense of a rendez-vous being missed, with the scene and the time of day. But her preparations for flight were stayed by their payment for her interest in the plait. They plied her with questions; presently they were offering to lend her skating-boots, and choosing from amongst the guests at their hotel, people she would like. They were pitying her, thinking that she must be having a poor time and determined at once that she should do more than just stand upon the edge, sunning herself in the glow of the life they were finding so entrancing. But her contemplation of the desert that must be, from their point of view, the life of a woman obviously poor and apparently isolated, took her for a moment far away, and when she returned the link between them was snapped. Her silence had embarrassed their habit of rapid give and take. Making vague promises, she took leave, rescued by their immediate reversion to the forms of speech set for such occasions, from holding forth upon the subject of the dead level of happiness existing all over the world independent of circumstances. They would have thought her both pious and insane. * * * * * All the afternoon they had been in harmony, strolling and standing about together in the snow until there seemed nothing more to say; and after each run there had been something more to say. Till Italy lost all strangeness but its beauty and he had seemed a simpler Michael free from Michael’s certainty that everyone in the world was marching to annihilation. It was the discovery of a shared sense of life at first hand that had made them not fear saying the very small things. And suddenly there was a wall, dividing. No more communication possible; the mountains grown small and bleak and sad and even now, in being alone upon the promontory there was no peace, in all the wide prospect no beauty. Why was it so much a matter of life and death, for men as for women? Why did each always gather all its forces for the conflict? If all he said were a part of the light by which he lived he should have been able to remain calm. But he had not remained calm. He had been first uneasy, then angry, and then sorry for the destruction of their friendship.