They planned a week's rest, and a
fortnight or more of mountain climbing, dismissing the world war from
their minds as far as possible. But their gentle plans were upset on the
eighth day after their arrival, when at the end of an hour's hard
skating, clad in the bright sweaters and caps of old, Gisela suddenly
stopped short and returned the hard stare of two young women who had
drawn apart and were evidently discussing her. That they were Americans
Gisela recognized at a glance, but for a moment she saw them through a
curtain of fire and smoke and shrieking shells and dying groans, so
deep in the background of her memory were the people and events of her
merely personal life. One of the young women was very tall, with a slim
dashing figure, fine fair hair, keen cold gray eyes, a haughty nostril
and upper lip: a beauty of the patrician American type. The other was
shorter but also excessively thin, with dark dancing eyes, a warm color,
a coquettish nose and pouting lips--which somehow invoked the complacent
visage of the late Herr Graf Niebuhr--and a brilliant smile. In a moment
Gisela recognized Ann Howland Prentiss and Kate Terriss, now Mrs. Tolby.
This American friend of her childhood had married an American whose
business kept him in London, and her path and Gisela's had never crossed
since her finishing days in Berlin; although she had corresponded with
Lili for two or three years and knew the family history in vague
outline.
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