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298 when Teresa went to take tea with Nina, the little town was buzzing with news of an accident. It was late at night before the facts were known. Meantime Crayven had come back, alone. He had separated from the other two, who had insisted on taking a short cut and had been caught by an avalanche; one of them had been killed and the other seriously hurt.

That night there was a moon, nearly full, shining down from a cloudless sky on the jagged, snowy crests of the Dents du Midi, and touching the mysterious black shadows of the pine forests. Teresa sat on her balcony, watching, troubled in mind. Crayven had come to see her for a moment, having heard of the accident on his return. He had been grave but not moved, and in the shrug of his shoulders and the curt way in which he had condemned the foolhardiness of his companions she had read his indifference to one human life, as such, more or less. There had been a certain physical radiance about him from his long day above there on the rocks. … Teresa wondered why he did not go away, for the real climbing he had meant to do. These mountains after all were child's play to him, and she could not see what there was to content him in the quiet life of the valley. In a month or so he would have to go back to his post. Looking up at the cold mountain-peaks she pictured the desert—the rolling hills of sand, the noise of