They mounted and sped off one behind the other through a scene that was now the child’s vast desolation. In place of joyous flight, selfish, in which Daphne had been forgotten, came now this absurd urgency to arrive. Mrs. Harcourt felt it. She was sorry, in her kindliness, for Daphne’s disappointment, but saw nothing of the uselessness of arriving without her. Thought of nothing but herself, her determination, her hatred of being beaten. This made a shelter. Under the shelter of Mrs. Harcourt’s determination to be there because she had said she would be there it was possible to be seen rushing uselessly to the last farewell. Another bend. Beyond it a sleigh coming up and Mrs. Harcourt carefully passing it and the other tobogganers drawn up in the snow. It was safely past. Mrs. Harcourt was getting ahead. Going recklessly. Even for her there was something more in this desperate urgency than the mere determination to arrive. If she too were to arrive it was now or never. Now, at once, in the midst of this winding ice-patched roadway, she must give herself up to what she had learned on the safe snowfields and never yet dared to try here until the last clear slope was reached. Lifting her feet to the bar, leaning back to swing free and steer by weight she let herself go. The joy of flight returned, singing joy of the inaccessible world to which in flight one was translated, bringing forgetfulness of everything but itself. Bend after bend appeared and of itself her body swayed now right now left in unconscious rhythm. The landscape flew by, sideways-upwards, its features indistinguishable. She was movement, increasing, cleaving the backward rushing air. At the last slope she was level with Mrs. Harcourt, safely, triumphantly returned to the known world, passing her, flying down so blissfully that arrival would now be nothing but an end to joy. Flying down towards two small figures standing on the level, turned this way, watching up the incline down which speeded, superfluously, absurdly, just these two women. “Where’s Daphne?” said Eaden in his rich, indolent voice; looking over their heads, staring up the slope. While Mrs. Harcourt’s deep bass, still staccato with her anger, told the brief tale, she watched the pain and wrath in his face, strong man’s sympathy of pain with this child to whose spirit he gave homage, anger with those who had deserted her. Her useless explanation flickered about him unspoken, silenced by the pain she shared. “It’s no good, old man,” said Vereker gently, watch in hand: “we must be off.” Formal hand-shaking. To Mrs. Harcourt’s padding of sociable remarks he paid no heed, keeping his eyes still above her on the bend at the head of the slope until he turned to tramp off with Vereker, to the sound of Vereker’s kindly, sunny voice. “Paw kid. Eaden was frightfully wrath. Thought we ought to have brought her.”