The green morocco

desk that held them he took down from the shelf and laid upon the

table. Tied to the lid was the visiting card with his brother’s London

address “in case of accident.” On the way down to the hotel he wondered

why he had done this, for though imaginative, he was not the kind of

man who dealt in presentiments. Moods with him were strong, but ever

held in leash.

“It’s almost like a warning,” he thought, smiling. He drew his thick

coat tightly round the throat as the freezing air bit at him. “Those

warnings one reads of in stories sometimes …!”

A delicious happiness was in his blood. Over the edge of the hills

across the valley rose the moon. He saw her silver sheet the world of

snow. Snow covered all. It smothered sound and distance. It smothered

houses, streets, and human beings. It smothered—life.

V

In the hall there was light and bustle; people were already arriving

from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many

wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking

“snow” and “ski-ing.” The band was tuning up. The claims of the

hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass

windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home

from the cafe to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that

conflict he used to imagine. He laughed because it suddenly seemed so

unreal. He belonged so utterly to Nature and the mountains, and

especially to those desolate slopes where now the snow lay thick and

fresh and sweet, that there was no question of a conflict at all. The

power of the newly fallen snow had caught him, proving it without

effort. Out there, upon those lonely reaches of the moonlit ridges, the

snow lay ready—masses and masses of it—cool, soft, inviting. He

longed for it. It awaited him. He thought of the intoxicating delight

of ski-ing in the moonlight….

Thus, somehow, in vivid flashing vision, he thought of it while he

stood there smoking with the other men and talking all the “shop” of

ski-ing.

And, ever mysteriously blended with this power of the snow, poured

also through his inner being the power of the girl. He could not

disabuse his mind of the insinuating presence of the two together. He

remembered that queer skating-impulse of ten days ago, the impulse that

had let her in. That any mind, even an imaginative one, could pass

beneath the sway of such a fancy was strange enough; and Hibbert, while

fully aware of the disorder, yet found a curious joy in yielding to it.

This insubordinate centre that drew him towards old pagan beliefs had

assumed command. With a kind of sensuous pleasure he let himself be

conquered.

And snow that night seemed in everybody’s thoughts. The dancing

couples talked of it; the hotel proprietors congratulated one another;

it meant good sport and satisfied their guests; every one was planning

trips and expeditions, talking of slopes and telemarks, of flying speed

and distance, of drifts and crust and frost. Vitality and enthusiasm

pulsed in the very air; all were alert and active, positive, radiating

currents of creative life even into the stuffy atmosphere of that

crowded ball-room. And the snow had caused it, the snow had brought it;

all this discharge of eager sparkling energy was due primarily to

the—Snow.

But in the mind of Hibbert, by some swift alchemy of his pagan

yearnings, this energy became transmuted. It rarefied itself, gleaming

in white and crystal currents of passionate anticipation, which he

transferred, as by a species of electrical imagination, into the

personality of the girl—the Girl of the Snow.