They spent the rest of their week at Partenkirchen, a village in a mountain valley, surrounded by a chain of glittering peaks. The village was little more than one steep street bordered by inns and shops, but there were farms in the valley and on the nearer hillsides. The natives wore high fur caps, not unlike the cossack headgear, and seemed to exist for decorative purposes only, although alive to the lure of tourist silver. The hotel at the top of the street was very modern, with a good cook, little balconies for those that would enjoy the view, and many nooks in the rooms downstairs for those that would talk unhindered if not unseen. At this season there were no other English or Americans, but a sufficient number of Europeans of the leisure class to make the dining-room brilliant at night and animated at all times.

Julia and Ishbel had provided themselves with short white skirts of thick material, white men’s sweaters, and white Tam o’ Shanters. The men couldn’t wear white, but looked their best, as men always do, in rough mountaineering costume. They climbed, skated, skied, and tobogganed; and, under Julia’s gentle manipulation, kept close together. It was natural that Tay should fall to Ishbel in their outings, and only once or twice did he manage to drag Julia’s sled up the hill, or direct her uncertain footsteps when on the snow-shoes. Then she was so excited with the new sport that she paid little attention to him. She threw herself into it with the zest of a child, and he couldn’t flatter himself that her merry laugh was forced, nor the dancing lights in her eyes. Nor was he depressed himself by any means; the tonic air went to the heads of all of them, and they enjoyed themselves with an abandon possible only to those that have seen too much of life.

But on the last day, Ishbel, who saw through Julia’s man?uvres, deliberately stayed in bed with a headache, and Dark, without warning of his intention, departed early with a guide. Tay and Julia met alone at the breakfast table.

“Now!” he said gayly. “I’ve got you. What are you going to do about it? If you shut yourself up in your room, I’ll break the door down.”

“As if I’d do anything so silly. How I wish we could stay here a month.”

“Why not?”

“I left no address, and I may have stayed too long already?—”

“Sh-h!”

“You could not, either.”

“Oh, yes, I could. Dark has been pulling wires, and I’m dead sure now that the thing will go through.”

“I’m so glad! But no doubt you could have managed it by yourself sooner or later. I fancy you’ll always be a success in business.”

“Thanks. If you mean to insinuate that business and cards are in the same class, I’m not a bit discouraged.”

“Pour me out another cup of coffee. I believe American men like to wait on women.”

“It’s part of our game. You see how honest I am. You’ll marry me without illusions.”

“Shall you boss me frightfully?” Julia looked at him over her cup, and he nearly dropped his. He kept his bantering tone, however.

“The more you do for me, the more I’ll spoil you. It will be quite an exciting race. How should you like being spoiled for a change?”

“It would be glorious. So irresponsible.”

“Exactly. That’s what makes many a man get drunk. Few sensations so delightful as that of complete irresponsibility.”

“Do you get drunk?” asked Julia, in mock alarm.

“Gorgeously. Am I not a good San Franciscan? Not too often, however. Bad for business.”

“You never told me if you went on that spree when you got those ten thousand dollars. Or didn’t you get it? Perhaps you anticipated, and your father wouldn’t—what did you call it—plunk?”

“I didn’t, and he did, and I did. I whooped it up for just five days. To tell you the truth, I didn’t find as much in it as I expected, but felt I owed it to myself. Wish now I’d come over and eloped with you.”

“Ah!” Julia made a rapid mental calculation. He would have arrived at about the time Nigel was laying his last desperate siege. Poor Nigel! Julia could picture Tay’s wooing and methods. Would he have won where her more courtly knight had failed?

“Suppose I had never turned up?” asked Tay, abruptly. “That husband of yours can’t live forever, is many years older than you, anyhow. Do you fancy you would have eventually married Herbert? Corking books! He must be some man.”

Julia had flushed to her hair. “How did you know I was thinking of him?” she stammered.

“Were you? Well, those flashes happen, you know. You haven’t answered my question.”

“It is quite impossible for me to tell, even to imagine, what I might have done if you—well, if you had not come over again. I’ve never really thought of marrying Nigel, but there would be a certain rest in it—not now, but later, perhaps. And we think and work with much the same objects.”

“Nothing in rest till you’ve had the other thing first. How much thinking did you expend on that other thing before you were submerged in the unmentionable?”

Julia blushed again, then laughed. “Oh, well—some day, I’ll tell you a funny experience I had in India.”

“Tell me now.”

“Over empty coffee-cups and fragments of buttered rolls? Not I. What shall we do first? Skate?”

“If you like. Do you want to toboggan afterward?”

“I think I’d like a tramp through the woods. We’ve never really investigated them.”

“Good. Come along.”

They found the lake deserted and skated in silence until Tay remembered her promise.

“This is a sufficiently romantic spot for confidences,” he observed. “And in full view of the waiters of the hotel, who appear to have nothing to do but watch us. Tell me your Indian experience. Whom did you think you were in love with over there?”

“Nobody. That was the tro............