"I would like to sit in it again and drive a little way."
"Why not?" said I. "What do you say, Otto?"
"Of course.
You have a thick coat, and here are rugs and wraps enough."
Pat sat forward behind the windshield beside Koster.
Karl bellowed.
The exhaust gas steamed blue-white in the cold air.
The engine was not warm yet.
Slowly clapping, the chains began to eat their way through the snow.
Spitting, cracking and snarling, Karl crept down to the village and along the main street, a crouching wolf amid the trample of horses and tinkle of sleighbells.
We came out of the village.
It was late afternoon and the snowfields glowed red, tinged by the descending sun.
Some ricks on the slope lay almost buried in whiteness..
Like tiny commas the last skiers dropped down into the valley.
As they did so they passed under the red sun, that appeared once more, mighty beyond the slope, a ball of dusky fire.
"Did you come along here yesterday?" asked Pat.
"Yes."
The car topped the summit of the first ascent.
Koster stopped.
The view from here was overpowering.
The day before, as we sped along through the glassy, blue evening, we had not even noticed it.
We had had eyes for nothing but the road.
Rise beyond rise the manifold valley opened.
The ridges of the distant ranges stood out sharp and clear against the pale green sky.
They glowed golden.
Golden flecks lay dusted over the snowfields at the foot of the peaks.
From moment to moment the slopes took on an ever more gorgeous whitish red, and the shadow became ever bluer.
The sun stood in the gap between two shimmering peaks and the broad valley with its dips and rises was like some vast, mute, glittering parade before a dying ruler.
The violet ribbon of the road wound among the hills, disappeared, reappeared, dark at the bends, past villages, and then ran straight along the saddle of the pass to the horizon.
"I've never been so far from the village before," said Pat. "Is that the road home?"
"Yes."
She was silent and looked along it.
Then she got out and held her hand shading her eyes. And so she peered into the north as if she could see already the spires of the city.
"How far is it?" she asked.
"About a thousand kilometres.
In May we'll go along there.
Otto is fetching us."
"In May," she repeated. "My God, in May."
Slowly the sun sank.
The valley came to life; shadows that hitherto had been squatting fixed in the folds of the ground started noiselessly to creep out and climb higher like blue gigantic spiders.
It turned cool.
"We must get back, Pat," said I.
She looked up and her face was suddenly stricken with pain.
I saw at once that she knew everything.
She knew she would never escape beyond that pitiless chain of mountains on the skyline, she knew it and meant to hide it, just as we had meant to hide it from her, but for one moment she lost her grip and all the misery of the world broke in her eyes.
"Let's go down just a little way," said she. "Just a little way down." "Come," said I, after a glance at Koster.
She got in at the back with me, I bedded her in my arm and pulled the rugs over us both.
The car began slowly to descend the mountain, into the valley and the shadows.
"Robby, darling," whispered Pat on my shoulder, "now it's as if we were driving home, back into our life—"
"Yes," said I and covered her up to the hair.