Rowland climbed into many awkward places, and skirted, intently and peeringly, many an ugly chasm and steep-dropping ledge.

But the sun, as I have said, was everywhere; it illumined the deep places over which, not knowing where to turn next, he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine void--nothing so human even as death.

At noon he paused in his quest and sat down on a stone; the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst that was now possible was true.

He suspended his search; he was afraid to go on.

He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten, became vividly present to his mind.