Here a spire would pierce the sunlight with slabs of red rock interspersed amongst its gray; there ice-cliffs sparkled as though strewn with jewels, bulged out in great green knobs, showed now a grim gray, now a transparent blue.

At times a distant rumble like thunder far away told that the ice-fields were hurling their avalanches down.

Once or twice she heard a great roar near at hand, and Chayne pointing across the valleys would show her what seemed to be a handful of small stones whizzing down the rocks and ice-gullies of the Aiguille Verte.

But on the whole this new world was silent, communing with the heavens.

She was in the hushed company of the mountains.