Now, however, flushed with her exertion and glad to draw her breath
at her ease, she looked down and was astonished. So far below her
already seemed the glacier she had left, so steep the rocks up which
she had climbed.
"You are not tired?" said Chayne.
Sylvia laughed. Tired, when a dream was growing real, when she was
actually on the mountain face! She turned her face again to the rock-wall
and in a little more than an hour after leaving the foot of the gully she
stepped out on to a patch of snow on the shoulder of the mountain. She
stood in sunlight, and all the country to the east was suddenly unrolled
before her eyes. A moment before and her face was to the rock, now at her
feet the steep snow-slopes dropped to the Glacier of Saleinaz. The crags
of the Aiguille Dorees, and some green uplands gave color to the
glittering world of ice, and far away towered the white peaks of the
Grand Combin and the Weisshorn in a blue cloudless sky, and to the left
over the summit of the Grande Fourche she saw the huge embattlements of
the Oberland. She stood absorbed while the rest of the party ascended to
her side. She hardly knew indeed that they were there until Chayne
standing by her asked:
"You are not disappointed?"
She made no reply. She had no words wherewith to express the emotion
which troubled her to the depths.
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