For his eyes were no longer good.
"He is very kind," said Sylvia.

"He understood that there was some trouble, and while he led the mule he sought to comfort me," and then between a laugh and a sob she added: "You will never guess how.

He offered to give me his little book with all the signatures--the little book which means so much to him." It was the one thing which he had to offer her, as Sylvia understood, and always thereafter she remembered him with a particular tenderness.

He had been a good friend to her, asking nothing and giving what he had.

She saw him often in the times which were to come, but when she thought of him, she pictured him as on that early morning standing on the bluff of cliff by the Montanvert with the reins of his mule thrown across his arm, and straining his old eyes to hold his friends in view.
Later during that day amongst the seracs of the Col du Geant, Simond uttered a shout, and a party of guides returning to Chamonix changed their course toward him.