“It’s all right, Daphne.” Eaden’s voice eager, free of its drawl, crying out in pity and wrath. He had leapt from his chair and was gathering and fixing together the detached parts, bear and ski and pole found by Daphne returned, lying as if broken upon the table at his side. She stood speechless, a little forlorn child red-cheeked and tearful in dismay. A little way off stood the Skerry youth with his grin. CHAPTER V What had brought this wakening so near to the edge of night? The mountains were still wan against a cold sky, whitening the morning twilight with their snow. How long to wait, with sleep gone that left no borderland of drowsiness, until the coming of their gold? And in a moment she had seen forever the ruby gleaming impossibly from the topmost peak: stillness of joy held still for breathless watching of the dark ruby set suddenly like a signal upon the desolate high crag. It could not last, would soon be plain sunlight. Already it was swelling, growing brighter, clearing to crimson. In a moment it became a star with piercing rays that spread and slowly tilted over the upper snow a flood of rose. Each morning this miracle of light had happened before her sleeping eyes. It might not again find her awake. But it had found her awake, carried her away in a moment of pure delight that surely was absolution? And when presently the rose had turned to the familiar gold creeping down to the valley it was more than the gold of yesterday. In watching its birth she had regained the first day’s sense of endless time. To-day was set in advance to the rhythm of endless light. To-day was an unfathomable loop within the time that remained before the end of Eaden’s visit, his short allowance that added, by being set within it, to her own longer portion. His coming had brought the earlier time to an end; made it a past, expanding in the distance. And beyond his far-off departure was a group of days with features yet unseen. Looking back upon that distant past it seemed impossible that the crest of her first week was not yet reached. Yet the few days that seemed so many had already fallen into a shape. Morning blessedness of leisure smiled down upon by the mountains again tawny in their sunlight, witnessed to by every part of the house wandered through; rich sense of strength unspent; joy of mere going out again into the wide scene, into the embrace of the crystal air; the first breath of its piny scent, of the scent of snow and presently the dry various scents confined within the little street, messengers of strange life being lived close at hand; the morning dive into the baking warmth of the post-office to find amongst the English vehement at their pigeon-holes the sharpest sense of being out in the world of the free; then the great event, the wild flight down to the valley’s sudden stillness.