“I have seen the children playing near it,” said the Traveller.  “When I was a, child I used to play there.  Ah, if I had only known!  Well, the past is the past.”

He would have rested against a huge stone, but that the old white-haired man prevented him.

“Do not rest,” he said.  “If you once rest there, you will not rise again.  When you once rest, you will know how weary you are.”

“I have no wish to go farther,” said the Traveller.  “My journey is done; it may have been in the wrong direction, but still it is done.”

“Nay, do not linger here,” urged the old man.  “Retrace your steps.  Though you are broken-hearted yourself, you may save others from breaking their hearts.  Those whom you meet on this road, you can turn back.  Those who are but starting in this direction you can bid pause and consider how mad it is to suppose that the Temple of True Knowledge should have been built on an isolated and dangerous mountain.  Tell them that although God seems hard, He is not as hard as all that.  Tell them that the Ideals are not a mountain range, but their own plains, where their great cities are built, and where the corn grows, and where men and women are toiling, sometimes in sorrow and sometimes in joy.”

“I will go,” said the Traveller.

And he started.

But he had grown old and weary.  And the journey was long; and the retracing of one’s steps is more toilsome than the tracing of them.  The ascent, with all the vigour and hope of life to help him, had been difficult enough; the descent, with no vigour and no hope to help him, was almost impossible.

So that it was not probable that the Traveller lived to reach the plains.  But whether he reached them or not, still he had started And not many Travellers do that.

CHAPTER VII.

Bernardine.

The crisp mountain air and the warm sunshine began slowly to have their effect on Bernardine, in spite of the Disagreeable Man’s verdict.  She still looked singularly lifeless, and appeared to drag herself about with painful effort; but the place suited her, and she enjoyed sitting in the sun listening to the music which was played by a scratchy string band.  Some of the Kurhaus guests, seeing that she was alone and ailing, made some attempts to be kindly to her.  She always seemed astonished that people should concern themselves about her; whatever her faults were, it never struck her that she might be of any importance to others, however important she might be to herself.  She was grateful for any little kindness which was shewn her; but at first she kept very much to herself, talking chiefly with the Disagreeable Man, who, by the way, had surprised every one—­but no one more than himself—­by his unwonted behaviour in bestowing even a fraction of his companionship on a Petershof human being.