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Updated: May 14, 2025
It seemed that she was to be kept by some fatality close-fettered to the task, the hopeless task, which she would now gladly have foregone. And she wondered whether, after all, she was in some way meant to watch the plot, perhaps, after all, to hinder it. "Hilary," she said, "you remember that evening at the Chalet de Lognan?" "Do I remember it?"
The Pavillon de Lognan is built high upon the southern slope of the valley of Chamonix, under the great buttresses of the Aiguille Verte. It faces the north and from the railed parapet before its door the path winds down through pastures bright with Alpine flowers to the pine woods, and the village of Les Tines in the bed of the valley.
Did no one walk the earth of all that company which went with her in her fancies? Upon that her thoughts flew to the Alps, to the evening in the Pavillon de Lognan, the climb upon the rocks and the glittering ice-slope, the perfect hour upon the sunlit top of the Aiguille d'Argentière. The memory of the mountains brought her consolation in her bad hour, as her friend had prophesied it would.
They found their stone-encumbered pathway of the morning and at three o'clock stood once more upon the platform in front of the Pavillon de Lognan. Then she rested for a while, saying very little. "You are tired?" he said. "No," she replied. "But this day has made a great difference to me." Her guides approached her and she said no more upon the point.
Sylvia did not think it worth while to argue that Chayne's coming was a surprise to her as much as to her father. She crossed the garden toward her friend. But she walked slowly and still more slowly. Her memories had flown back to the evening when they had bidden each other good-by on the little platform in front of the Chalet de Lognan.
"You were not wrong," she answered. "It is only because you are very kind that you want me to believe it. But I see the truth quite clearly"; and she smiled at him. "If you wanted me to believe, you should never have told me of the law, a year ago in the Chalet de Lognan. My father obeyed the law that was all.
Then the technical side of Chayne's proposal took hold of him. "The Col Dolent? You will have to start early from the Chalet de Lognan, monsieur. You will sleep there, of course, to-morrow. You will have to start at midnight perhaps even before. There is very little snow this year. The great bergschrund will be very difficult.
She turned her eyes from the mountain to Revailloud and let them rest quietly upon his face. "And why do you advise the Aiguille d'Argentière?" she asked. Michel saw her eyes softly shining upon him in the darkness, and all the more persisted. Was not his dear patron who must needs be helped to open his eyes, since he would not open them himself, going to sleep to-morrow in the Pavillon de Lognan?
She was silent for a moment or two, looking up the glacier toward the Aiguille d'Argentière. "I thank you very much for coming with me," and again the humility in her voice, as of one outside the door, touched and hurt him. "I am very grateful," and here a smile lightened her grave face, "and I am rather proud!" "You came up to Lognan at a good time for me," he answered, as they shook hands.
If only there were no other party there in that small inn! Michel's hopes took a leap and reached beyond the Pavillon de Lognan. To ascend one's first mountain yes, that was enviable and good. But one should have a companion with whom one can live over again the raptures of that day, in the after time. Well perhaps perhaps!
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