"I am too."
"It is true, isn't it, darling?
I'm not just driving down to the stazione in Milan to see you off."
"I hope not."
"Don't say that.
It frightens me.
Maybe that's where we're going."
"I'm so groggy I don't know," I said.
"Let me see your hands."
I put them out.
They were both blistered raw.
"There's no hole in my side," I said.
"Don't be sacrilegious."
I felt very tired and vague in the head.
The exhilaration was all gone.
The carriage was going along the Street.
"Poor hands," Catherine said.
"Don't touch them," I said. "By God I don't know where we are.
Where are we going, driver?"
The driver stopped his horse.
"To the Hotel Metropole.
Don't you want to go there?"
"Yes," I said. "It's all right, Cat."
"It's all right, darling.
Don't be upset.
We'll get a good sleep and you won't feel groggy to-morrow."
"I get pretty groggy," I said. "It's like a comic opera to-day.
Maybe I'm hungry."
"You're just tired, darling.
You'll be fine."
The carriage pulled up before the hotel.
Some one came out to take our bags.
"I feel all right," I said.
We were down on the pavement going into the hotel.
"I know you'll be all right.
You're just tired.
You've been up a long time."
"Anyhow we're here."
"Yes, we're really here."
We followed the boy with the bags into the hotel.
BOOK FIVE
38
That fall the snow came very late.
We lived in a brown wooden house in the pine trees on the side of the mountain and at night there was frost so that there was thin ice over the water in the two pitchers on the dresser in the morning.
Mrs. Guttingen came into the room early in the morning to shut the windows and started a fire in the tall porcelain stove.
The pine wood crackled and sparked and then the fire roared in the stove and the second time Mrs. Guttingen came into the room she brought big chunks of wood for the fire and a pitcher of hot water.
When the room was warm she brought in breakfast.
Sitting up in bed eating breakfast we could see the lake and the mountains across the lake on the French side.
There was snow on the tops of the mountains and the lake was a gray steel-blue.
Outside, in front of the chalet a road went up the mountain.