the murder or the suicide more or less that gives release? It is hell here or hell there: they are sure of this—they have it; the other may not come to pass.”

“What do you mean?” I said, with white lips; for as he spoke it seemed as if I had come into a land of lepers. “Here in this white solitude, among lives fed from the primitive sources of nature and the dew of the morning—”

“I mean,” he said, “that I refuse to accept the factitious aid your thoughts have lately been bringing to me. You see I have preternatural senses. Because I was born in the snows of the mountains I am no whit whiter than those born in the purlieus of the police stations of the cities. We are simply of the same human nature. When I win regard, it must be for no idle fancy, but for my own identity.”

“Well,” I said, “I do not believe you.”

“Ah!” he replied, “have I gained a point, and found an advocate in an ideal of me? That would be as romantic as any of the romance of the hills. And there is romance here, whether it is born of crime, or of joy or of sorrow. There is romance enough on that old Mount of Sorrow that you see when the storm opens and strips it in that sudden white glory. Keep your eye, if you please, on a spot halfway up the sky, and when the apparition comes again you will find the dark outline of a dwelling there. It was a dwelling once; now it is only a ruin, hut and barn and byre. Why do you shudder? Do you see it? It is only a shadow. But a shadow with outlines black enough to defy the whitest blast that ever blew. Sometimes it seems to me as though that old ruin were itself a ghostly thing, a spectre of tragedies that will not down; for the avalanches divide and leave it, and the storms whistle over and beat against it, and it is always there when the sun rises. I don’t know what it has to do with my fortunes; I don’t know why it is a blotch upon the face of nature to me; but if ever I grow sad or sick at heart I feel as though I should be made whole again could that evil thing be removed.

“Why not remove it?”

“It does not belong to me. I can do nothing with it. I am not sure that it belongs to any one—which adds to the spectral, you see—although I suppose there is somewhere a nameless heir. How restless you are!” he said gently. “Will you come out in the long hall where the great window gives an unobstructed view of the thing, and walk off this nervousness? The storm is lifting, I think; the moon is going to overcome. One may see by the way the fire burns that the temperature is mounting. Perhaps we shall have a snow- slide as we walk.”

Rhoda and Merivale were singing some of the songs they had learned since they came into the hill country, Mrs. Montresor was nodding behind her fan an accompaniment to Dr. Devens’ remarks, Adèle was deep in her novel, and a flirtation and some portfolios of prints occupied the rest. To refuse was only to attract attention; besides, I should like to walk. I rose and went out with him into the hall that shut off the wing from the great empty caravansary:

“And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor,”

I quoted as we walked; and despite the fire burning on either side, he had brought me a fur for my shoulders.

“Yes,” he said, “there comes the moon at last. Now you shall see the black and white of it.”

“Oh!” I cried, clasping my hands, as all the silvery lights and immense shadows burst out in a terrible sort of radiance. “The world began to be made here! Poets should be born here!”

“Instead of tavern-keepers,” said he, “which brings me to my story. I am forty-three years old. Of course I was younger twenty-three years ago. That must have been not long before you came into the world yourself. Do you insist upon thinking twenty years’ difference in age makes any disparity, except in the case of him who has lost just that twenty years’ sweetness out of his life?”