Beside Elizabeth, under a group of pines, lay a bed of snow-lilies, their golden heads dew-drenched, waiting for the touch of the morning, waiting, too--so she thought--for that Canadian poet who will yet place them in English verse beside the daffodils of Westmoreland.
She could hardly breathe for delight.

The Alps, whether in their Swiss or Italian aspects, were dear and familiar to her.

She climbed nimbly and well; and her senses knew the magic of high places.

But never surely had even travelled eyes beheld a nobler fantasy of Nature than that composed by these snows and forests of Lake Louise; such rocks of opal and pearl; such dark gradations of splendour in calm water; such balanced intricacy and harmony in the building of this ice-palace that reared its majesty above the lake; such a beauty of subordinate and converging outline in the supporting mountains on either hand; as though the Earth Spirit had lingered on his work, finishing and caressing it in conscious joy.
And in Elizabeth's heart, too, there was a freshness of spring; an overflow of something elemental and irresistible.
Yet, strangely enough, it was at that moment expressing itself in regret and compunction.

Since the dawn, that morning, she had been unable to sleep.