Then she kissed him.
'Don't be a beggar,' she pleaded, wistfully. 'It isn't ignominious that
you love me.'
'It is ignominious to feel poor, isn't it?' he replied.
'Why? Why should it be?' she asked. He only stood still, in the
terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the mountain tops, folding
her round with his arms.
'I couldn't bear this cold, eternal place without you,' he said. 'I
couldn't bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.'
She kissed him again, suddenly.
'Do you hate it?' she asked, puzzled, wondering.
'If I couldn't come near to you, if you weren't here, I should hate it.
I couldn't bear it,' he answered.
'But the people are nice,' she said.
'I mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternality,' he said.
She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nestling unconscious in
him.
'Yes, it is good we are warm and together,' she said.
And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights of the hotel
glowing out in the night of snow-silence, small in the hollow, like a
cluster of yellow berries.
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