Chapter XVIII

But these intimate conversations belonged, as by right, to the darkness of after dinner. The sunny mornings--and in the summer of 1899 the days were monotonously, illustriously sunny--would see them on the tennis court, playing their practice singles. Enthusiasm more and more possessed Daphne as she found her strokes getting stronger, her eyes surer, and her feet swifter. She still ran shrieking from side to side of the court as he placed the ball now in one corner and now in another; and when she shrieked she apologised, promising "she would not do that again." If he beat her with a malicious and impossible ball she looked angrily at him through the strings of her racket, and even threw out her tongue.

When the games were over, and he declared that he was thirsty, she would say, "So'm I. Let's go and get some fizzy." And they would walk back to the terrace, where she poured out the drink for him. Always she remarked that when she was close to him, pouring out his drink, he would be silent and almost painfully abstracted. That she was encouraging him she knew, but could not cease from it; something compelled her to show that she was happy in this fellowship and ready to think of herself and him as a separated pair.

Soon her father took to coming and watching them at tennis. He must learn, he said, whether there was anything in this noisy rumour of his daughter's skill. As an outcome of his survey he was struck by his daughter's exceedingly good form in the matter of tennis and her exceedingly bad form in the matter of manners--shrieking and leaping as she did whenever there was occasion for triumph or reprobation, shouting "Oo!" and "Lordy!" and "Coo!" and even staring impudently at the young man through the grill-window of her racket. The second time he watched, an early evening after tea, he was strongly impressed by the unconscious or subtly concealed way in which she was throwing herself at this American boy. He pulled his moustaches over it, sitting under the chestnut trees above the play. The thing interested him as a philosopher and a student of human nature, and he ruminated, detached from it, as though the girl were not his daughter. In watching this attraction between a man and a maid, thought he, he was very near to the acme of things. If to a vitalist philosophy love was life at its greatest intensity, here was he watching it break through and bud vividly. An unconscious youth and girl didn't realise that this was the explanation of their genius for love. Yes, life touched no higher point than this; and nuptials, therefore, to those who could see, were a coronation ceremony of life.

These thoughts were interrupted by the game's early close. Young Detmould had promised to meet his sister returning on the steamboat from Treib; and Mr. Bruno was slightly disturbed to hear his daughter call out: "Oh, must you go? What a shame! I'll come with you to the gate."

"_Bon Dieu!_" thought Mr. Bruno. "That's going rather far."

The gate she meant was at the end of a narrow serpentine path that threaded downward through the crowding firs. He allowed her five minutes before following her; and then, lighting a cigar to fortify him in a difficult interview, strolled along the path. She was leaning, as he saw on turning the last bend, against the post of the little swing gate, and sucking a large and ungovernable sweetmeat. The American boy must have just disappeared, and Daphne be indulging a reverie. This sight of his daughter resting against a gate and symbolising the acme of things touched him. He called:

"Duffy."

She looked up, startled.

"Come back with me and be lectured."

She replied nothing, but sucked the abominable lollipop (thus treating his promised lecture with scanty reverence), and taking her elbow from the gate-post came to him. And it was as they were walking back that he said:

"You're obviously throwing yourself at the head of that American youth."

"Oh, I'm not!" she exclaimed.

"You said that like a Cockney serving-girl. I tell you you are deliberately--whether in the body or out of it I can't say--throwing yourself at the besotted young man, who's quite palpably in love with you."

The sentence was music in Daphne's ears. She liked her father to think that Henry Detmould was in love with her, and so said nothing for fear of damaging the thought.

"Tell me, Duffy, what would you think of a bookseller who was so unable to recognise a first edition that would one day be of some value that he flung it into the twopenny box for the first loiterer to buy?"

She provided the answer expected from her.

"I should think him a silly fool, I suppose."

"Well, but thou art the man--the creature, I mean."

"Daddy, I'm not. You're imagining it all. Besides, you might go on saying that for ever. I must like some one one day."

"Yes; but, Duffy go slow, go slow. What you may think is love is often self-hypnotism. You've always had a fairly clear brain, so make sure first."

"But how does one make sure?"

"How? I don't know. I think time alone will test it for you. What do you know of young Detmould? You've only met him for a week or two. All I can say for him is that he has the grace to be much shyer of encouraging you than you are of him."

"I've never encouraged him one bit."

"Not deliberately and vulgarly. But whether you know it or not, my dear, you hang out teasing flags."

She ran upstairs to dress for dinner, and closed her bedroom door, as if to add more privacy to her thoughts. She stood behind her window and looked out.

How did one make sure?

What did she really feel? Certainly she wanted to keep her lure for Henry, and her long thoughts about him. With this new interest life had dyed itself very bright; and if a wand could wave it away so that it had never been, everything would drop into paleness again. Up till their arrival at Brunnen her book-thoughts had crowded her mind, but now Henry had sent them below and occupied their room. In his talks on the terrace at night he had given her more than any one else in the world. Not only had he unveiled the wrongness in her approach to art, but his wide-thrown learning had indirectly shamed her into disturbing realisations. He talked of philosophy--and what did she know of philosophy? Wrinkling his forehead, or pressing a hand on his hair, he spoke of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, declaring that he who would be master of one art must be jack of them all--and she knew hardly anything of the names he mentioned! Greatness, she realised, as she listened in a humiliated silence, was not born from dreaming on it, nor was it attained by the slothful who read only what was easy. If you were to express your reaction to life, you must aim at little else than all knowledge, so should it be the reaction of a fine mind. All this he had given her. Was she in love with him? She created a very private picture of herself lying in Henry's arms, pressed against his heart. It sent a tremor of joy through her.

But what did _he_ feel? There was that first night's staring at her. There was his pointed choice of her to play tennis with, though really she could be nothing more than a wild pupil. And sometimes when he caught her eyes he swung his own away uncomfortably. But was it only a passing attraction--a holiday flirtation? No, it didn't seem like that. That strange agitation of his hands, when she stood very close to him and poured out his drink--it didn't look like flirting.

She stepped forward and stood on her loggia, staring over the lake at the fir-woods climbing the opposite mountain. The evening was close, and the water filmed and inert. A little boat with two people in it was coming home to Brunnen from the Schillerstein. After watching it for a while, she quickly turned her head leftward and upward to the floor above--where Henry's window was. He was standing on his balcony, looking down at her loggia. And he had seen her glance, and awkwardly waved his hand, as if to show he was unembarrassed. She pretended not to have recognised him, and retreated into her room.

That night there was dancing in the lounge. Daphne, with a Spanish embroidered shawl about her shoulders, sat next her father, watching the first waltz, and hoping Henry would soon come and ask her to dance, that her father might be further persuaded of his love. But not once did he come near her. He danced two or three dances with his sister, and some more with a very pretty girl, whom Daphne had often noticed. But she was not jealous of her, for Henry as he waltzed seemed abstracted and mechanical.

Daphne was not left without partners. The most persistent suitor was a tall, moustached Swiss, who, having once found her, was beyond question lost in admiration of his discovery. She talked gaily to him in French, but was thinking all the while: "Why doesn't Henry come? Is he hurt about something? Did he think I snubbed him by not answering his wave? I didn't mean to snub him--I was only shy...." She tried a happier thought. "Perhaps he doesn't want to compromise me by being seen so much with me, and this is so public. Yes, it's that. It's a good sign, rather than a bad one." But when they passed each other dancing, and he smiled a merry recognition, as if there were nothing remarkable in their not dancing together, she doubted again. "I shall know to-morrow morning, if he asks me to play tennis with him as usual."

In the morning she dawdled on the terrace in the hope of his invitation, but he passed her gaily, calling that he was going to climb the Selisberg with his sister and Clarkson. Almost it appeared as if he had made up his mind to avoid her. And in the evening, after dinner, he, Elsie and Clarkson sat with her father and her, and all discussed with perfect naturalness their adventures during the day. Never did he attempt to escape from the shelter of a crowd. At ten o'clock she retired to her bedroom with her wound. "Time is so short. We shan't have more than a month here, and we are wasting precious days. Henry, you know you want to be with me. You know you do."

One day succeeded another without bringing back the former intercourse. It was a mystery. Only when other people were with them did they meet. And yet she knew all the while that he was longing to have her alone. She would leave herself in places where he was likely to arrive, and then, shy of appearing to have done it on purpose, stroll away as soon as she saw him in the distance. Sometimes when she was thus set for him, the moustached Swiss would appear, and, though courteous to him, she would be thinking: "I don't want you. I don't want you. I'm awfully sorry if you're in love with me, because I know what it is to love without return. I'm sorry." And as soon as possible she would escape.

Her father took her on carriage excursions to Tellsplatte and the Einsiedeln Monastery, and Altdorf, and up the Furka Pass to the Rhone Glacier; and on the same days Henry went climbing with Elsie and their friend. A week of this mere friendliness heightened her doubt to misery, and her love to passion. Not now did she bring it to trial. She would not so insult it. She was madly in love with Henry. She wanted Henry with his boyish features and shape and his rich mind--his mind that blent with hers and fertilised it. She wanted him for her exclusive possession, to imprison him in herself. She was unable to read, unable to talk to people, and annoyed with her father when he came to chat. Always she wished to be worrying out the problem, "Does he love me?" sometimes answering it, "Yes, I know he does, in spite of all," and at other times, "He did for a few days, he really did, but not now." Or she refused herself so much comfort as that, declaring, "No, he was never more than just interested." And she would review every look she had seen in him, and every sentence he had uttered, in quest of proofs that he had loved her; and with a sunken heart decide that there was nothing that she could twist into more than a transient interest. She played an old childish game, "If I pass that post before some one speaks to me, then he does love me," and if it went against her, refused to believe in it. The terrace and the tennis court and its seat under the chestnuts, and all the places where they had been together, clothed themselves with pain. And if people in their innocence spoke to her about Mr. Detmould, or "that young American," she felt she had a proprietary interest in him, and gave information as one who spoke with authority.

Her fist had clenched over the vow: "You shall come back to me first. I won't go to you. Time may be short, but you shall come to me first."

In the end, however, she went to him.

He was sitting quite alone in a dark corner of the long terrace, as far as possible from the people round the string quartette. Pretending not to see him, she wandered past.

"You look tired," came his voice from the obscurity.

"Oh ... hallo!"

He extended the chair that was next to him, leaving his arm along its back.

"Why not sit down?"

After some meaningless hesitation she accepted the chair.

"I will--for a little," stuttered she, as he withdrew his arm. "But it's cold, isn't it?"

"I don't think so."

It was a preamble to nothing; neither found more words. She looked at the Spanish shawl, lying on her lap, and fiddled with its embroidery. Something told her that Henry was agitated and trembling internally, though nothing in his posture or movements suggested it; only the foot of his crossed leg swung gently. At one moment she knew that he was looking at her arms, and she scanned them herself. Hard tennis had made them slenderer than usual, and exposure had browned them; they were trembling.

"If you're cold," said Henry at last, "you'd better put your shawl on. Let me put it round you."

He took it off her lap and, as she bent forward without looking at him, placed it about her shoulders, careful not to touch her. She leaned back in her chair.

"Do you think you've been playing too much tennis?" asked he.

"Oh, no. Why?"

"You look tired--and frailer."

"Then I certainly shan't play much more. It's my ambition to get fatter."

"Oh, no!"

"Oh, yes!"

"No," he repeated. "You're all right as you are. I like your narrow shoulders--and your slimness--and your childish clothes. I wouldn't have you different."

As with such words they seemed to have fluttered very near to something, both withdrew into silence.

"Elsie and I and Clarkson are going to climb the Mythen to-morrow." Thus he deliberately broke the pause.

"Are you?"

"Yes.... Or I'm supposed to be going too. I'm not sure that I want to. I feel I'd rather laze about here. We go away so soon."

"Do you?"

"In a fortnight's time."

She showed no feeling, though the shadow of a future pain fell near.

"We're going on a walking tour," he continued--"over the Furka Pass and down into Brigue. I was tremendously keen on it, but the prospect bores me now. However...."

"I wish you weren't going. It'll be rotten here without your sister and you."

Henry uncrossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

"Have you ever thought," said he, "that one never discovers the truth of how to live until it's too late to live?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I am twenty-five, and I've found no code by which one lives a full life and yet hurts nobody. When I've read enough and thought enough and got the brains to think out a philosophy of living, I shall probably be too old to live."

Daphne nodded as if she partly understood.

After a silence that often moved with undelivered words, he proceeded, gaining time between sentences by tending his cigarette:

"Take a hypothetical case. An artist of some sort--let us say a man seeking to be a great, and, above all, a _true_ musician--wants to be loyal to life as it calls him--knows that he _ought_ to be loyal to it.... And it suddenly calls with a voice so sacred that it seems almost like a religious call--through some love, I mean--it--it calls him to the wilful snapping of all the world's inhibitions. He is not in the happy position of possessing a religion to tell him that these inhibitions are the laws of God. If he were, the problem would be solved at once, and his duty plain.... But instead, he suspects that they are things improperly thought out, and enforced by those who have forgotten what it was like to love.... Well, a vision has haunted all artists that their road to beauty is through lawlessness and danger.... They have seen that Art is a sort of Mysticism, because you will never attain to its highest places unless you are ready to leave all and follow life.... And it isn't pure selfishness, as people say, for timidity and selfishness and security often pull on the other side.... Oh, but this is old stuff--much of it is in your father's books--but it comes alive for one, when one is going through what thousands have gone through before...."

"I don't think I understand," said Daphne.

With that he stopped like a train against the buffers.

Between ten and eleven that night she stood near her window--or out on her loggia, laying hands on the balustrade and looking over the lake tranced by the darkness.

"He _does_ love me. I'm sure of it. Just now he does. And I do love him. I love him madly."

But why? Of his past or his full character she knew nothing; she had only looked on his outward appearance, and into his mind with its enthusiasm. But whether, to those who knew him in the deep, he was good or bad she didn't care. She would almost like to be told of sins he had committed, that she might assure him they were nothing to her.

But what would come of it all?

"What do I really believe will happen? I suppose I really believe we shall be separated when he goes, and perhaps come together in the future, or perhaps not. But, of course, we shall part without telling each other anything.... He couldn't very well speak, after only knowing me a few weeks."

Strange that, too sunk in the joy of loving, she was not made miserable by this sense of shortness. It had not yet got through her exultation, or the little of it that flushed her feelings, by adding poignance, sweetened them.

But what did he mean by that talk of the world's inhibitions, and of timidity and selfishness and security pulling you back, and of not hurting others? She could make nothing of this. If he yielded to his love for her, how would he injure anybody or affront the world? Was he perhaps engaged to a girl? Or--quick, heart-gripping fear!--had he meant some one other than herself--some married woman, perhaps--when he spoke of a love that called him? Was he only using her as a friendly person to whom he could pour out his trouble?

"No, he meant _me_." Her heart steadied. "He meant me. I'm sure of it. I can't tell why, but I know it."

Resolved to keep this certainty and to take it into her dreams, she turned into the light of her bedroom, leaving the window wide open, for the night was close, undressed, and got into bed. With a mind studiously emptied, like a room for Henry to walk about in, she fell asleep. Her dreams, as often happened, had nothing to do with him whom she had tried to will into them. She dreamt that she was back in the months before they came to Switzerland, wandering along the roads of the Montmorency Forest, and watching the men quarrying the yellow stone for the local villas, or the woodcutters stacking their faggots. Once she was in a gloomy avenue of huge fir trees that approached the gates of a château, and down the avenue came the girl of her own age, herding her white goats. Of such places as Brunnen, or of such people as she would meet there, she had as yet no knowledge.... Now she was walking along a sun-spotted glade towards St. Prix, where Miss Sims's class and Miss Vidella's spectacled stare were awaiting her; and abruptly, without break in the sunlight, and without wetting her in the least, the rain began to tear through the branches. It was magnificent. Any second the thunder would come. The first crash, with its rolling echoes, woke her.

She saw through her open window that it was early morning, and the rain was rushing down in lines so perpendicular, so visible, and so close as to seem like the warp of unmade linen. A flash of lightning introduced another clap of thunder which repeated itself, for interminable seconds, among the mountains and in the great basin of the lake. There were rhythmical pauses in the rain, and when its curtain was removed, the peaks, framed by her window, stood folded round with clouds. She jumped up to watch. The storm's rhythm was wonderful. For a few moments the clouds would dissipate, revealing the snowfields rosy with sunrise, and then condense again, and there would be thunder and the shattering curtain of rain.

The immediate message of the storm was one of hope. Henry was to have gone climbing the Mythen to-day, and now, perhaps, he wouldn't go. In mid-morning the weather would clear and they would play tennis, or it would stay wet and they would find some sheltered place to talk. Her watch said five o'clock; if only she could keep the storm over Brunnen till Elsie and Henry had finally abandoned their early start for the Mythen! But it began to pass, and in fifteen minutes might never have been. Stepping on to the loggia she gave a quick glance towards Henry's room; its sunblinds were up and its French windows thrown open. Possibly he was getting ready--but, no, surely he wouldn't go--he would make excuses to remain behind, and after breakfast she would find him lingering on the terrace waiting for her to appear. Free of his sister and Clarkson, he would suggest their game of tennis, and when that was over they would walk together with feigned naturalness along the winding path between the firs, and he would abruptly ask her to let him row her over to the Rutli, and once on the water they would glide to solitary places under the farther bank.

Such would be their morning, and she dressed suitably for it. But in the restaurant there was no Henry dawdling at his breakfast-table, where she had hoped to see him, nor was he on the terrace or in the lounge, when she wandered through them.

He had gone, then. He had gone with his sister to climb the Mythen.

She was stabbed by it. It meant worrying out all over again the problem whether or not he was in love with her. "He must have made any excuse to stay if he felt for me what I feel for him. Then he _doesn't_." Seated on a chair on the terrace, she passed in review, one, two, and three times, every symptom of love or every hint of indifference he had shown the first day. And the evidence, after this crowning incident of the Mythen, seemed to show that he liked her a little, but knew none of the doubting, hungry, monopolising love that was hers. It was a terrible verdict--and she didn't believe it. "He _does_ love me, I know it. But why then did he go?" Her father came and sat beside her, and she wished he would go away. He went; but other people strolled up and started to be pleasant. Some of them, deceived by her blithe answers, kept her in conversation for long quarters of an hour, while her problem waited where it was hidden, crying to her to return. At last, for fear of being spoken to, she left the hotel and walked along the streets of Brunnen.

In these streets, if she walked away from the lake, she could see the twin points of the Mythen rising high above the broken sky-line. How exactly like the two humps of a sitting camel they were! No, they were too pointed--a little too conical for that. Sometimes they looked like two pyramids, joined together as Siamese twins were joined. Trees mantled them for a great way up, and then the points rose naked. Through those trees, though they were miles away, one could almost see the paths where he was climbing.

When she entered the restaurant for dinner that evening, a rapid, careless, over-shoulder glance showed him talking gaily to his sister. In that glance his profile had appeared to be almost ugly; and, though surprised, she was pleased, half hoping that, by seeing his plainness, she could be cured of her love and given relief from its pains. But the thought was dead as soon as born.

Waiters cleared the lounge for dancing, but she did not want to dance. And when the tall, moustached Swiss came seeking her for his partner, she declared that she had resolved not to dance to-night. Escaping from her father's side, she went and sat alone in the comparative darkness of the terrace. It was deserted except for a couple in the distance who were sitting out a dance. She left the Spanish shawl on her lap, and, stretching her legs before her, crossed one ankle over the other. There was an iron table beside her, and she rested her elbow upon it. Her mood made her wish she could light a cigarette like a man, and send up her thoughts in puffs or rings of smoke.

She might have sat there fifteen minutes when Henry appeared and walked towards her.

"You've deserted us," smiled he.

"Yes, I'm tired."

"So am I."

"Did you climb the Mythen?"

"Yes, to the very top. That's why I'm done for. So's Elsie. She's danced two dances and gone to bed."

He sat on a chair the other side of the iron table. Taking a loose silver matchbox from his waistcoat pocket, he lit a Swiss cigar and laid the matchbox on the table.

"I thought possibly you wouldn't go," ventured Daphne, "when I saw the storm this morning."

"I shouldn't have minded much if it had stayed a bit longer and prevented our going. I was never very eager about it."

This led them into the accustomed silence; he was engrossed in watching his smoke, and she, happy because he had sought her out, picked up his matchbox and twisted it in her fingers, with her face averted. Once, lest the silence became too noticeable, he said:

"I danced three dances with Miss Storry, and they were three too many for any one so exhausted."

And Daphne, resolved to be generous, answered:

"I think she's such an awfully pretty girl."

"Yes. I suppose she is."

After that he returned to his smoke and Daphne to her playing with his matchbox. The silence was next broken by Mr. Bruno, who walked up behind a cigar.

"Ah, you, Mr. Detmould, being American, can afford to take your holiday slowly, but my daughter and I, being English Imperialists, will have to quicken the _tempo_ of ours, I'm afraid."

"What are you talking about, Daddy?" asked Daphne languidly, as he drew up a chair.

He was talking about the privileges of belonging to an Imperialist nation, he explained, and the chances it offered of conscientiously shooting Dutchmen in their own country. Didn't she realise that, as a loyal Englishwoman, she would soon be at war with the Transvaal?

"I'm not going to war with any one," she grumbled; and Henry, turning towards her father, said that he had thought the news was better.

Her father then spread himself to be interesting, as, indeed, he could be in such a matter as this. The French and German papers in the lounge, said he, were so much more feminine and indiscreet than the ponderous English journals. And they showed that the Transvaal was arming to the eyebrows, and that trainloads of suspicious packing-cases, labelled as farming implements, were pouring from France and Germany--through Capetown, if you please--and up to Pretoria. And the Boers were buying horses in every market, and Europe's soldiers-of-fortune appearing in the Boer streets. And the English, in their usual humorous way, had answered all this by sending out two companies of engineers.

Henry inquired when the fighting would begin.

"When the rain comes, and the grass for the horses," said her father.

Henry nodded. The conception was picturesque.

"In September or October, I suppose," pursued Mr. Bruno. "As soon as the veldt is right, old Kruger won't wait for us to send him an ultimatum, he'll send his own instead. He'll say: 'Come on!' And I expect we shall send out two more companies of engineers."

But Daphne, momentarily stimulated, was no longer interested. Had all Europe been going to war it would not have found an inch of resting-room in her mind, for her love was a monopolising and unsociable tenant. Even the thought that this war might prevent their visit to Italy was unimportant now. Italy was nothing. It lay beyond the day when Henry and she should have parted. What mattered was that their few remaining hours were flying, and fate seemed determined that they should never be alone.

And in the next few days they did not meet except in the presence of others. This was all the stranger, since Elsie Detmould had kept to her bed for two days, having taken cold when climbing the Mythen. Henry, one would have thought, would have been freer to seek out Daphne. But he didn't, and she sat on terrace or in lounge, and an unread book on her knees, arguing over and over again her old case. On the Wednesday, three days before he went, he _did_ come for a little while and sit beside her--the table between them as before. And all his words, she dared to believe, hinted at warmer meanings behind.

"I don't want to leave this place a bit," he grumbled.

"When are you going?"

"Saturday morning--soon after sunrise.... It's--it's not to be thought."

Daphne turned her head towards those meeting mountains where the lake appeared to finish in a dark corner. Up through them, as far as she could remember, climbed the serpentine road to the Furka Pass. She pictured Henry, with knapsack and alpenstock, bending to its steeper slopes, till he reached the summit of the pass and ascended to the ice-fields of the Rhone Glacier.

"Oh, but you'll enjoy going over the Furka. The view from the glacier is too wonderful for words. I can imagine you on the ice."

"I wish you were coming too," he murmured.

"So do I. But we're staying here a little longer, and then going to Grindelwald."

"Yes, I know."

"But will your sister be well enough to do all that walking?"

"Oh, yes, that's what she's come for. She was ill in the spring, and was determined to get rid of it. She's always been a dashing sort."

Daphne was now seeing a picture of Henry's childhood, and feeling jealous of Elsie and all those who had known him during the twenty-five years before she did.

"Yes," continued Henry, "I've been looking it out on the map. We shall be only about thirty miles apart, and yet have all the highest mountains of the Bernese Oberland between us."

This could be met only with silence.

The next morning, Thursday, when she was strolling through the hotel, she played on her pains by trying to imagine that it was Saturday, and that Henry had already left. And as she looked at the places where they had talked together, she knew she would not be able to endure the hotel after he had gone; these places would hit her wound too cruelly. Much better to be clear of Brunnen, seeing something new! How could she get away? How could she ask her father to take her away without betraying her secrets? Impossible as it seemed to his incisive eyes, it must be attempted.

She found him on the seat above the empty tennis court with a book and a cigar.

"Daddy," she began, sitting next to him. "Aren't you getting bored with this place yet?"

"Not particularly. Are you?"

She thought it out.

"No. But I'm quite keen on moving on and seeing somewhere else.... I'm so afraid, you see, that this old war'll prevent us doing half of what we planned--you said we'd have to speed up things a bit--so I vote we go on to Grindelwald."

He did not turn and look at her in an enquiring surprise, but studied the tennis court before him; and she knew that he had guessed everything. He did not chaff her, saying, "Let's see, the American boy goes on Saturday, doesn't he?" for he knew (and she could almost feel his knowledge) that the matter had passed beyond chaff. Of his gentleness he would erect between them a pretence of ignorance, though each would know that neither believed in it.

"I shouldn't mind," said he. "I'm afraid I am rather apt to take root where I can find a garden and book. When do you suggest going?"

"Well, not to-morrow, of course. But Saturday perhaps, or Sunday. I'm awfully keen on seeing the other places."

"Saturday's the day after to-morrow, isn't it? Well, certainly if you order it. You're in command of this expedition."

Dinner that evening showed Elsie back in her place; and Daphne, when she followed the diners into the lounge, resolved to make much of her. She had seen hardly anything of Henry's sister, what with their climbing in the daytime and the attentions of Mr. Clarkson at night. And for some reason she wanted Elsie Detmould to take away with her a liking for Daphne Bruno. So now, since Elsie was sitting alone, she took the wicker chair at her side and asked after her cold.

"I reckon I'd forgotten its existence till you mentioned it," drawled Elsie pleasantly. "Two days in bed'll finish off the best of colds.... But I was determined to be quit of it, as we've all this marching ahead of us."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you're going so soon. Must you?"

"Yes, I guess we can't stay here all the time. We want to see other places, and we haven't too long in Switzerland. I've got to get back to my mother, and Henry's got to get back to his wife."

It was as if a revolver had been shot off in Daphne's ear.

But as instantaneous was the conviction that she must keep perfect control of herself and show nothing to Elsie. Elsie had spoken quite naturally and without malice, evidently having seen nothing more than friendliness between her brother and Daphne. Daphne turned and looked at her, laughing.

"I never knew he was married!"

"Married? Very much so. He was married four years ago."

Daphne frowned a humorous incredulity--as if the joke were getting better.

"Four years? He doesn't look old enough."

"He married at twenty-one."

"I suppose he's a father, too. But I simply can't imagine it."

"No, he's not a father yet."

"He ought to have brought his wife with him, on a lovely holiday like this."

"Ah, but she especially arranged that he should bring me. I'm really recuperating from a breakdown."

"Awfully sporting of her," said Daphne.

"Yes, she's a good sort. And I guess she quite enjoys a holiday from Henry. Husbands are a bit trying sometimes."

How Daphne kept up that conversation and her suitable smiling till the moment when politeness allowed her to escape she never knew. There must have been half an hour of it before she found herself in her bedroom with the door closed.