He reached and touched the dead face. And the sharp, heavy bruise of ice bruised his living bowels. He wondered if he himself were freezing too, freezing from the inside. In the short blond moustache the life–breath was frozen into a block of ice, beneath the silent nostrils. And this was Gerald!

Again he touched the sharp, almost glittering fair hair of the frozen body. It was icy–cold, hair icy–cold, almost venomous. Birkin’s heart began to freeze. He had loved Gerald. Now he looked at the shapely, strange–coloured face, with the small, fine, pinched nose and the manly cheeks, saw it frozen like an ice–pebble—yet he had loved it. What was one to think or feel? His brain was beginning to freeze, his blood was turning to ice–water. So cold, so cold, a heavy, bruising cold pressing on his arms from outside, and a heavier cold congealing within him, in his heart and in his bowels.

He went over the snow slopes, to see where the death had been. At last he came to the great shallow among the precipices and slopes, near the summit of the pass. It was a grey day, the third day of greyness and stillness. All was white, icy, pallid, save for the scoring of black rocks rocks that jutted like roots sometimes, and sometimes were in naked faces. In the distance a slope sheered down from a peak, with many black rock–slides.

It was like a shallow pot lying among the stone and snow of the upper world. In this pot Gerald had gone to sleep. At the far end, the guides had driven iron stakes deep into the snow–wall, so that, by means of the great rope attached, they could haul themselves up the massive snow–front, out on to the jagged summit of the pass, naked to heaven, where the Marienhutte hid among the naked rocks. Round about, spiked, slashed snow–peaks pricked the heaven.

Gerald might have found this rope. He might have hauled himself up to the crest. He might have heard the dogs in the Marienhutte, and found shelter. He might have gone on, down the steep, steep fall of the south–side, down into the dark valley with its pines, on to the great Imperial road leading south to Italy.

He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The south? Italy? What then? Was it a way out? It was only a way in again. Birkin stood high in the painful air, looking at the peaks, and the way south. Was it any good going south, to Italy? Down the old, old Imperial road?

He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease to care. Best cease to care. Whatever the mystery which has brought forth man and the universe, it is a non–human mystery, it has its own great ends, man is not the criterion. Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non–human mystery. Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.

‘God cannot do without man.’ It was a saying of some great French religious teacher. But surely this is false. God can do without man. God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters failed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed with them. In the same way the mystery could dispense with man, should he too fail creatively to change and develop. The eternal creative mystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a finer created being. Just as the horse has taken the place of the mastodon.

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, we reckoned we’d strike another river soon, d‘ye see. But there was somethin’ wrong; compasses, or map, or somethin’, and it didn’t turn up. Water ran out. Just except a little drop for the likes of you, and — and —”

“And you couldn’t wash yourself,” interrupted his companion gravely, staring up at his grimy visage.

“No, nor drink. And Mr. Bender, he was the fust to go, and then Indian Pete, and then Mrs. McGregor, and then Johnny Hones, and then, dearie, your mother.”

“Then mother’s a deader too,” cried the little girl, dropping her face in her pinafore and sobbing bitterly.

“Yes, they all went except you and me. Then I thought there was some chance of water in this direction, so I heaved you over my shoulder and we tramped it together. It don’t seem as though we‘ve improved matters. There’s an almighty small chance for us now!”

“Do you mean that we are going to die to?” asked the child, checking her sobs, and raising her tear-stained face.

“I guess that’s about the size of it.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” she said, laughing gleefully. “You gave me such a fright. Why, of course, now as long as we die we’ll be with mother again.”

“Yes, you will, dearie.”

“And you too. I’ll tell her how awful good you‘ve been. I’ll bet she meets us at the door of heaven with a big pitcher of water, and a lot of buckwheat cakes, hot and toasted on both sides, like Bob and me was fond of. How long will it be first?”

“I don’t know — not very long.” The man‘s eyes were fixed upon the northern horizon. In the blue vault of the heaven there had appeared three little specks which increased in size every moment, so rapidly did they approach. They speedily resolved themselves into three large brown birds, which circled over the heads of the two wanderers, and then settled upon some rocks which overlooked them. They were buzzards, the vultures of the West, whose coming is the forerunner of death.

“Cocks and hens,” cried the little girl gleefully, pointing at their ill-omened forms, and clapping her hands to make them rise. “Say, did God make this country?”

“Of course He did,” said her companion, rather startled by this unexpected question.

“He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri,” the little girl continued. “I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It’s not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees.”

“What would ye think of offering up prayer?” the man asked diffidently.

“It ain’t night yet,” she answered.

“It don’t matter. It ain‘t quite regular, but He won’t mind that, you bet. You say over them ones that you used to say every night in the wagon when we was on the plains.”