When he came into the living-room Sylvia Thesiger was already breakfasting.
"Did you sleep ?" he asked.
"I was too excited," she answered.

"But I am not tired"; and certainly there was no trace of fatigue in her appearance.
They started at half past one and went up behind the hut.
The stars shimmered overhead in a dark and cloudless sky.

The night was still; as yet there was no sign of dawn.

The great rock cliffs of the Chardonnet across the glacier and the towering ice-slopes of the Aiguille Verte beneath which they passed were all hidden in darkness.

They might have been walking on some desolate plain of stones flat from horizon to horizon.