Part 6

Most of the things that he had planned they did. But they climbed more

than he had intended because Ann Veronica proved rather a good climber,

steady-headed and plucky, rather daring, but quite willing to be

cautious at his command.

One of the things that most surprised him in her was her capacity for

blind obedience. She loved to be told to do things.

He knew the circle of mountains about Saas Fee fairly well: he had been

there twice before, and it was fine to get away from the straggling

pedestrians into the high, lonely places, and sit and munch sandwiches

and talk together and do things together that were just a little

difficult and dangerous. And they could talk, they found; and never

once, it seemed, did their meaning and intention hitch. They were

enormously pleased with one another; they found each other beyond

measure better than they had expected, if only because of the want of

substance in mere expectation. Their conversation degenerated again

and again into a strain of self-congratulation that would have irked an

eavesdropper.

“You’re--I don’t know,” said Ann Veronica. “You’re splendid.”

“It isn’t that you’re splendid or I,” said Capes. “But we satisfy one

another. Heaven alone knows why. So completely! The oddest fitness!

What is it made of? Texture of skin and texture of mind? Complexion and

voice. I don’t think I’ve got illusions, nor you.... If I had never

met anything of you at all but a scrap of your skin binding a book, Ann

Veronica, I know I would have kept that somewhere near to me.... All

your faults are just jolly modelling to make you real and solid.”

“The faults are the best part of it,” said Ann Veronica; “why, even our

little vicious strains run the same way. Even our coarseness.”

“Coarse?” said Capes, “We’re not coarse.”

“But if we were?” said Ann Veronica.

“I can talk to you and you to me without a scrap of effort,” said

Capes; “that’s the essence of it. It’s made up of things as small as the

diameter of hairs and big as life and death.... One always dreamed

of this and never believed it. It’s the rarest luck, the wildest, most

impossible accident. Most people, every one I know else, seem to have

mated with foreigners and to talk uneasily in unfamiliar tongues, to be

afraid of the knowledge the other one has, of the other one’s perpetual

misjudgment and misunderstandings.

“Why don’t they wait?” he added.

Ann Veronica had one of her flashes of insight.

“One doesn’t wait,” said Ann Veronica.

She expanded that. “_I_ shouldn’t have waited,” she said. “I might have

muddled for a time. But it’s as you say. I’ve had the rarest luck and

fallen on my feet.”

“We’ve both fallen on our feet! We’re the rarest of mortals! The real

thing! There’s not a compromise nor a sham nor a concession between

us. We aren’t afraid; we don’t bother. We don’t consider each other;

we needn’t. That wrappered life, as you call it--we’ve burned the

confounded rags! Danced out of it! We’re stark!”

“Stark!” echoed Ann Veronica.