You said to me, 'I am sorry.' Michel heard you speak, and that evening talked of you.

He had the thought that you and I were matched." Sylvia looked back to the night before her first ascent.

She pictured to herself the old guide coming down the narrow street and out of the darkness into the light of the lamp above the doorway.

She recalled how he had stopped at the sight of her, how cunningly he had spoken.
He had desired that her last step on to her first summit should bring to her eyes and soul a revelation which no length of after years could dim.

That was the argument, and it was just the argument which would prevail with her.
"So it was his doing," she cried, with a laugh, and at once grew serious, dwelling, as lovers will, upon the small accident which had brought them together, and might so easily never have occurred.