“Yes, that’s Daphne. She’s mad about Napoleon. Reads all the books. Has’m in her room. I have to expound when she gets stuck. Won’t say her prayers till we’ve read a bit of Bony. Won’t say ‘make me a good girl.’ Says ‘make me a man and a sojer.’ She and Eaden are as thick as thieves. He’s an angel to her. I’ve got to be _hoff_. Goin’ to the Curse-all for lunch. Maud’s there. She’s goin’ south to-morrow with the Chisholmes.” “Before the Fest?” “Chisholmes have got to pick up their kid somewhere. Maud’s had enough of Switzerland for this year.” CHAPTER VII The clouds were a rebuke; for being spell-bound into imagining this bright paradise inaccessible. The world’s weather cannot be arranged as a conversation with one small person. Then how did the rebuke manage to arrive punctually at the serenest moment of self-congratulation? As if someone were watching ... She looked levelly across the sunny landscape and the clouds were out of sight. But there was a movement in the air, a breeze softly at work ousting the motionless Oberland air. She walked ahead, further and further into the disconcerting change. Everything was changed, the whole scene, reduced to homeliness. She caught herself drooping, took counsel and stiffened into acquiescence: “I might have known. I’m accustomed to this. It removes only what I thought I couldn’t give up. Something is left behind that can’t be taken away”—and heard at once within the high stillness the familiar sound of life, felt the sense of it flowing warmly in along the old channels, and heard from the past in various tones, amused, impatient, contemptuous: “You _are_ philosophical.” Always a surprise. What did they mean with their “philosophical”? The alternative was their way of going on cursing, missing everything but the unfavourable surface. Someone has said that there is nothing meaner than making the best of things. The clouds made soft patches of shadow upon the higher snow. Beside the angular sharp shadows growing upon the northern slopes they were blemishes, smudgy and vague. But free, able to move and flow while the mountains stood crumbling in their places. The clouds were beautiful, slowly drifting, leaving torn shreds upon the higher peaks. Upon the ridge beyond the cloaked silence of the little wood the breeze blew steadily from across the levels—that were strangely empty; no sign of moving specks making for the further ridge. Hurrying along the track she recalled too late the slightness of the information upon which she had built her idea of the golden scene; the gay throng, herself happily in the midst. Without a single clear idea of the direction she had trusted to the bright magic to draw her to itself.