It took him just two hours to
traverse the irregular curves of the lake on the Franz Carl Promenade,
and he ate his dinner in peace at the inn upon a balcony that projected
over the icy waters.
Davos decided, as he smoked a mild cigarette, that he would remain at
Alt-Aussee for the night. The peace of the landscape purified his soul
of its irritability, though he wished that the Dachstein would not
dominate so persistently the sky-line--it was difficult to avoid the
view of this solitary and egotistic peak, the highest in Styria. He was
assigned a comfortable chamber, but the night was too fine for bed. He
did not feel sleepy, and he went along the road he had come by; the
church was an opaque mass, the spire alone showing in the violet
twilight, like some supernatural spar on a ship far out at sea. He
attempted to conjure to his tired brain the features, the expression, of
the girl. They would not reappear; his memory was traitorous.
The murmur of faint music, piano music, made his ears wince--how he
hated music! But afar as were these tonal silhouettes, traced against
the evening air, his practised hearing told him that they were made by
an artist.
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