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To her complete astonishment, the Maloja Pass and the hills beyond it were dissolved in a thick mist. A monstrous cloud was sweeping up the Orlegna Valley.
The Orlegna Gorge had lost some of its beauty. Though the sun was pouring into its wooded depths, it had grown gloomy and somber in her eyes. Yielding to impulse, she loitered in the village, took the carriage road to the château, and sat there, with her back to the inner heights and her gaze fixed on the smiling valley that opened toward Italy out of the Septimer Pass.
A full moon was flooding the landscape with a brilliance not surpassed in the crystal atmosphere of Denver. The snow capped summit of the Cima di Rosso was fit to be a peak in Olympus, a silver throned height where the gods sat in council. The brooding pines perched on the hillside beyond the Orlegna looked like a company of gigantic birds with folded wings.
They happened to be crossing a bridge that spans the Orlegna before it takes its first frantic plunge towards Italy. Bower, who had quickened his pace, took the gesture as a signal, and sent an answering flourish. Helen stopped. He evidently wished to overtake them. "More explanations," murmured Spencer. "But he was mistaken. I was calling Nature to witness that your simile was not justified."
Near at hand, where the Orlegna rushed noisily from thraldom, the broken surface was somber and repellent. In color a dull gray, owing to the accumulation of winter débris and summer dust, it had the aspect of decay and death; it was jagged and gaunt and haggard; the far flung piles of the white moraine imposed a stony barrier against its farther progress.
Of course, there are prizes in life that cannot be measured by monetary standards." He was not looking at the Orlegna now, and the girl by his side well knew it. The great revelation that flooded her soul with light while crossing the Forno came back with renewed power. She did not pretend to herself that the words were devoid of a hidden meaning, and her heart fluttered with subtle ecstasy.
She flushed a little. Spencer was gazing down into the gorge of the Orlegna. The brawling torrent chimed with his own mood; but his set face gave no token of the storm within. He only said quietly, "How good it must be to have you as a friend!" "I have no reason to feel other than friendly to Mr. Bower," she protested hotly. "It was the rarest good fortune for me that he came to Maloja.
The rapid thaw that would set in during the forenoon might clear the roads before sunset. Next day, walking would be practicable; to-day it meant wading. He looked through the Orlegna gorge, and caught the silvery sheen of the Cima di Rosso's snow capped summit. Hardly a rock was visible. The gale had clothed each crag with a white shroud.
The eye instantly caught the contrast to their gray-white fellows piled on the lower moraine or in the bed of the Orlegna. Helen was quick to note the new tone of black amid the vividly white patches of snow. She waited until the deafening thunder peal was dying away in eerie cadences. "Why are the rocks black here and almost white in the valley?" she asked.
Apparently they were heading for the Orlegna Gorge, and she scanned the ground eagerly to learn how she could manage to spy on them without being seen almost immediately. Then she fell into the same error as Helen in believing that the winding carriage road to the church offered the nearest way to the clump of firs and azaleas by which Bower and Stampa would soon be hidden.
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