“ It was not possible for the American lady to fail to observe the interest she excited in the young girls. She saw their heads go together, then fly apart when she appeared; at table she caught their dark eyes watching her, and when they saw that they were noticed, away flew their eyes like scared birds. Miss Durham condescended to look at the girls with a half smile; she did not object to their admiration, and she did not court it.
What was more remarkable than the interest awakened in those children was that which she certainly aroused in Salome. ”

“ Then, still holding her pen, and still looking dreamily into the night sky, Salome passed in thought to her own situation, rendered doubly difficult by her father having attached himself to her sister. She could not desert Janet under the circumstances. She must be at her side to protect her from his rapacity and insolence. And yet she yearned with all the hunger of a mother's heart for her baby, that she might clasp it to her and cover its innocent face and hands and feet with kisses. And Philip——. She loved him also, with the calm unimpassioned love that springs out of duty. ”

“ Philip, and many another successful man of business who has been exalted to a position of comfort and warmth, has the inner garment of his soul scarred by the wheels of the chariot in which he has mounted. Philip felt his own awkwardness, his want of ease in other society than that narrow circle in which he had turned, his inability to move with that freedom and confidence which characterizes those born and reared in generous society. ”

“ Think of the junior partner, who has been waiting till a senior shuffled off his mortal coil to make room for him; how would he feel were the dead to return to life? Think of the curate waiting for the living, the next presentation to which is for him, should the old rector, after having laid himself down in his grave, change his mind and get out and resume his benefice for another fifteen years!
Mrs. Sidebottom had but just received news of the reappearance of Uncle Jeremiah, and, like an energetic woman, she wasted as little time as might be in exclamations of dismay. ”

“ What, Philip asked with a tremor—what if he had never met Salome, and had met Artemisia? Then indeed he would have been transported on strong wings out of the world of common-place, and the sound of common talk, and the murky atmosphere of vulgar interests, into a region where he would have shaken off his half-acquired habits of formality, his shyness, his cumbrousness and angularity, and become light-hearted, easy, and independent.
In dreams we sometimes imagine ourselves to be flying; we rise from the ground and labour indefatigably with our arms as wings ”

“ To every man comes at some period after he has begun to decline a great horror of old age, an agonizing clutch at the pleasures and follies of youth, a time of intoxication when he is not responsible for his acts, an intoxication produced by fear lest life with its roses should have passed and left only thorns behind and decay. Men whose lives have been spent in business, subjected to routine, who have not thought of love and amusement, of laughter and idleness, are suddenly roused to find themselves old and standing out of the rush of merriment and the sunshine of happiness. ”

“ I was gangrened at Andermatt by the deadly vapours there. I thank a merciful Heaven, with my strong constitution and by the warning afforded by my watch, I escaped death. I always carry about with me a silver timepiece, not one of gold, for sanitary reasons—the silver warns me of the presence in the atmosphere of sulphuretted hydrogen—of sewage gas—it blackens, as the arm of Lady Thingabob—I forget her name, perhaps she was of your lordship's family—as the arm, the wrist of her ladyship, was blackened by the grip of a spectre. I see you are bound for the Hôtel du Grand Prince. ”

“ Virtue, says Aristotle, is to be found in a happy medium, and not virtue only, but the plenitude and manifoldness of life can only unfurl itself in a happy medium between excess of freedom and oppressive restriction. Philip was and ever had been conscious that his abilities had not been allowed due expansion in the career into which he had been squeezed; and this American girl, with doubtless splendid capabilities of mind and heart, had allowed them to run riot and dissipate their fragrance in untutored independence. ”

“ Beaple Yeo came out after the party of Philip's table, not hatless, and his puggaree in the dusk fluttered like a gigantic white moth. The chaplain for the summer from England was also walking in the grounds with his newly-married wife: a feeble youth with a high-pitched voice and a cackling laugh, who had cultivated a military moustache, to point out his imbecility, as the ass in the fable assumed a lion's skin, but was revealed as an ass on opening his mouth. ”

“ These masses of cobweb, these layers of dust, these fat spiders were objects of pride to Philip. Every year the cobwebs gathered density, and the dust accumulated, and the spiders became more gross, hideous, and venomous; the wine remained corked, it was merely an excuse for the cultivation of cobwebs and spiders. We are all eager to show our friends through these rich wine-vaults of our hearts. We light candles and conduct them down with infinite pride, and what we expose is only our curtains of prejudice of ancient standing and long formation, our meannesses, and our spites. ”

“ Salome had been walking, nestled against Philip's side, not saying much, but feeling happy, when her attention was attracted by the wailing of a babe from one of the hotel windows.
'Philip, dear!' she said, 'there is my pet, my darling crying. I must tear myself away from you and go to him. I know he wants me. He is so clever. He is quite aware that I am here, and resents being rocked to sleep by the Swiss nurse; he is protesting that nothing will make him close his peepers but mamma's voice, and a kiss. And—oh, dear, dear Philip! ”

“ Some people embroider on a substratum of fact, but Beaple Yeo; and others of the like kidney, spin the threads and then weave their own canvas out of their own fancies, and finally embroider thereon as imagination prompts.
Darkness set in, that night as on every other, and most of the tourists had retired to bed, wearied with their walks and climbs, and those tarrying at Andermatt had also gone into the uncomfortable Swiss-German beds, tired with having nothing to do. Only two were awake, in separate wings of the hotel. One was Salome, the other the American stranger. ”

“ Earle Schofield, her father, was a swindler, and Louisa Sidebottom had committed an act that was felony.
And what was he, himself? He had wounded, driven from him with reproach and harshness the most innocent, single-hearted of women, who was faithful to him and to her duties in every fibre of mind, and body, and soul; whereas he, in a few hours, subjected to a slight temptation, had swerved from the path of right, had yielded to the fascination of the temptress, which he had not the moral strength to resist, and had been carried by her almost to the verge of committing a serious wrong. ”

“ There was a childlike simplicity in Salome, an ignorance of the world which would make of her a child to gray hairs; and this strange lady had clearly none of this simplicity and ignorance; she knew a great deal about the ways and varieties of life. One like Miss Durham would never go into gushing ecstasy over a baby, and forget that the first homage was due to her husband.
It afforded emphatic pleasure to Philip to be able to demonstrate before this single lady, with such a circle of relatives about him—six ladies and one gentleman—we are eight and you are one. ”

“ Matters that look serious at night shrink to trifling significance in the morning. Philip rose refreshed by sleep, with a buoyancy of heart he had not experienced for many months, and a resolution to enjoy his holiday now that he was taking one. How often had he longed for the chance of making an excursion on the Continent, of seeing the snowy ranges of the Alps and studying fresh aspects of human life! ”

“ At about an equal distance below, on another stage of the zigzag, was the carriage with Janet and the captain, and the driver, of whom no account was taken; and sometimes ahead of the carriage, sometimes behind, making rushes, then halts, like a covey of doves followed by a hawk, was the little cluster of girls with Mrs. Sidebottom. From a distance at one moment the three girls seemed to be flying before the elder lady armed with a parasol, which she swung about her head, then they seemed to cower on the ground into the herbage as birds beneath a swooping falcon. ”

“ On a brilliant summer day, when the sun was streaming down out of a perfectly-blue sky into the long main street of Berne, alive with marketers, three cabs drew up at the entrance to the Hotel of the Wild Man, near the Clock-tower, and from them stepped, in the first place, a young man in light-gray trousers and lavender gloves, and then a young and pretty lady wearing a bridal veil, a wedding-dress of silver gray. From the second carriage descended three bridesmaids—no other than the Labarte girls—and from the third cab Mrs. Sidebottom and Philip and Salome. ”

“ The discovery of her parentage must have been to Salome a crushing humiliation. What justification was there for his adding to her burden by his reproaches and coldness? She could not undo the past, unmake her relationship. His anger, his resentment, could not improve the situation, could not shake the truth of the hateful fact that he was allied to so great a scoundrel. Though she had been married under a wrong name, that would not invalidate the marriage even if he wished it—even if he wished it! ”

“ She revolved on her heel and walked hastily back to the hotel. Philip stood rooted to the spot.
What had he done? What shadow of a right had he to address an inoffensive girl with such impertinence? A girl who had done him no harm, and of whom he knew nothing, and who, for aught he knew to the contrary, might be as respectable, high-minded, and well-connected as the best lady in America. She had been alone in this foreign corner, shut out from social intercourse with her fellow-countrymen, and she had formed an acquaintance with his wife, his wife's sister, and the Labarte girls. ”

“ Philip retired to his room. The words of Jeremiah, charging him with visiting the offences of the father on the unoffending child, were but the repetition of his own self-reproach, but for that very reason less endurable. It is the truth of a charge which gives it its sting. A man will endure to say to himself what he will not tolerate to be said to him by another.
He went to his room, but not to bed. He sat at the window, where Salome had sat, in the same chair, thinking with dark brow and set lips. ”

“ We are all, through life, if we do not voluntarily become like the toad-hole dwellers, being introduced into new worlds, whether by the acquisition of a picture like the Fleming, or by learning a new language, like the German, or by travel, as the Yankee. Philip and Salome had put on their glasses simultaneously, and it quickened their affection for each other to be engaged on the same effort, and to be together in the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge and experience. ”

“ The setting sun illumined the distant snows of the giants of the Oberland, and quivered in the windows of the city below. There are epoch-making scenes in life, scenes to which the memory recurs with unalloyed pleasure, scenes which have been revelations of beauty or majesty to the soul, and such a scene is that from the Schanzli to the visitor who is there for the first time. ”

“ Do you know what it is to stand at the verge of a precipice? To stand on a spire top where there is sheer abyss on every side? Can you imagine the giddiness, the despair that comes over one? My place is one surrounded by precipices, dangers, everywhere; I see hands thrust out to give me the push to send me over, but not one—no, not one—to hold me.'
'You have mine,' said Philip, and laid his on her wrist. ”

“ His reappearance in Mergatroyd created a profound sensation. Everyone wanted to see him, and everyone had a hearty word of welcome. He was surprised at the amount of feeling that was manifested. He had lived to himself, seen little society, nevertheless he suddenly discovered that he had been popular. Everyone with whom he had been connected in however small a way respected him, and showed real pleasure at his return. The men at the mill—factory hands—would shake hands again and yet again, their honest and somewhat dirty faces shining with good will ”

“ But the pressure of modern life forces him to blacken over one after another of these sides, and to line each with a reflector, so as to focus the light, and cast it through a single lens. The stress of competition, the strain of the social struggle, combine to make of each man a bull's-eye lantern. It is true that the light so concentrated illumines such objects as fall within the radius of the beam with superior brilliancy, but it leaves everything else in more profound darkness. What is gained in intensity is lost in the periphery. Jeremiah had discovered this, and more than this. ”

“ Philip passed a night of pain and fever. He was bruised and shaken. His hands had been scarified in the slide down the rubble, and when circulation returned in them they bled. The exposure to cold had affected him, and he ached in every joint; his skin was as though red-hot plates had been passed over it. He could not sleep, for if he dropped out of consciousness it was into mental fear that he was falling down a precipice into the vortex of an unseen torrent, and he woke with a start that sent a thrill of torture through his strained nerves. ”