But he closed his ears to it. He began to
talk eagerly of his plans. There were familiar peaks to be climbed again
and some new expeditions to be attempted.
"I thought we might try a new route up the Aiguille sans Nom," he
suggested, and Michel assented but slowly, without the old heartiness and
without that light in his face which the suggestion of something new used
always to kindle. But again Chayne shut his ears.
"I was very lucky to find you here," he went on cheerily. "I wrote so
late that I hardly hoped for it."
Michel replied with some embarrassment:
"I do not climb with every one, monsieur. I hoped perhaps that one of my
old patrons would want me. So I waited."
Chayne looked round the platform for his friend.
"And Monsieur Lattery?" he asked.
The guide's face lit up.
"Monsieur Lattery? Is he coming too? It will be the old days once more."
"Coming? He is here now. He wrote to me from Zermatt that he
would be here."
Revailloud shook his head.
"He is not in Chamonix, monsieur."
Chayne experienced his second disappointment that morning, and it quite
chilled him. He had come prepared to walk the heights like a god in the
perfection of enjoyment for just six weeks. And here was his guide grown
old; and his friend, the comrade of so many climbs, so many bivouacs
above the snow-line, had failed to keep his tryst.
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