But no one sought to stop him.  Hibbert recalls only a single incident until he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her along the fringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a bewildering frieze of fantastic shadows.  And the incident was simply this—­that he remembered passing the church.  Catching the outline of its tower against the stars, he was aware of a faint sense of hesitation.  A vague uneasiness came and went—­jarred unpleasantly across the flow of his excited feelings, chilling exhilaration.  He caught the instant’s discord, dismissed it, and—­passed on.  The seduction of the snow smothered the hint before he realised that it had brushed the skirts of warning.

And then he saw her.  She stood there waiting in a little clear space of shining snow, dressed all in white, part of the moonlight and the glistening background, her slender figure just discernible.

“I waited, for I knew you would come,” the silvery little voice of windy beauty floated down to him.  “You had to come.”

“I’m ready,” he answered, “I knew it too.”

The world of Nature caught him to its heart in those few words—­the wonder and the glory of the night and snow.  Life leaped within him.  The passion of his pagan soul exulted, rose in joy, flowed out to her.  He neither reflected nor considered, but let himself go like the veriest schoolboy in the wildness of first love.

“Give me your hand,” he cried, “I’m coming ...!”

“A little farther on, a little higher,” came her delicious answer.  “Here it is too near the village—­and the church.”

And the words seemed wholly right and natural; he did not dream of questioning them; he understood that, with this little touch of civilisation in sight, the familiarity he suggested was impossible.  Once out upon the open mountains, ’mid the freedom of huge slopes and towering peaks, the stars and moon to witness and the wilderness of snow to watch, they could taste an innocence of happy intercourse free from the dead conventions that imprison literal minds.

He urged his pace, yet did not quite overtake her.  The girl kept always just a little bit ahead of his best efforts....  And soon they left the trees behind and passed on to the enormous slopes of the sea of snow that rolled in mountainous terror and beauty to the stars.  The wonder of the white world caught him away.  Under the steady moonlight it was more than haunting.  It was a living, white, bewildering power that deliciously confused the senses and laid a spell of wild perplexity upon the heart.  It was a personality that cloaked, and yet revealed, itself through all this sheeted whiteness of snow.  It rose, went with him, fled before, and followed after.  Slowly it dropped lithe, gleaming arms about his neck, gathering him in....