In the afternoon, as the rain continued, a different way of using the time was organised. In the vestibule of the Hôtel du Lac was hung a notice, on which was written "_Kinderballet_," that is to say, a children's dance, the celebrated, pretty dance for children which takes place at that hotel on a wet day. At the "Stahlbad" Frau Mentzel invited, through the telephone, fifty people to tea, when in the _salon_ there were already fifty people belonging to the same hotel. At St. Moritz Dorf, at the "Palace," twenty bridge tables were set, instead of the usual eight; at the "Kulm" a billiard match was started. Everywhere ping-pong tables were set up for boys and girls, everywhere the reading-rooms overflowed with people, and as an exception each took tea in his own hotel. Towards six the rain began to diminish, at half-past six it rained no more; so nearly all the men went forth for a quarter of an hour or five minutes for a breather, as they said, or to buy a paper and flowers. All breathed a very fresh air, and he who tarried found it very cold. At eight in the evening in all the hotels, as the ladies came down to dinner in low dresses, the large fireplaces had been lit; on entering their rooms at midnight they found their fires lit, and the stoves roaring with heat. The thermometer had descended rapidly to one degree below zero. Next morning the whole Engadine was covered with snow; it had snowed for five or six hours during the night.
As from his windows he watched the landscape become white with a wintry aspect, but without any of the cruel sadness of a winter day, with a slight whiteness in which he perceived grass and earth, with a whiteness almost ready to melt and vanish, Lucio Sabini moved impatiently. He opened the windows to see better, and leant out. He perceived that on the roads the snow had already vanished, but that the woods and meadows were still covered with it, and that the mountains around were covered with snow right to their base.
"But the roads are free," he said to himself, striving to conquer his impatience.
Impatience, uncertainty, and irritation disturbed him, as he dressed rapidly, glancing now and then at his watch. During the night he had slept little and badly, owing to a dull restlessness which he attributed to the idea of having to rise early that morning for the excursion with Lilian Temple and Miss May Ford to the Bernina Pass. He had slept little and badly, perhaps because his heart, nerves, and senses were overflowing with life, in a fullness that was sometimes too tumultuous, which he strove in vain to repress and hide. In the presence of the snow that had rendered white and cold all the landscape of mountains and woods, of meadows and houses, the fear lest that expected, desired, invoked excursion, that excursion which was perhaps to be the most beautiful and exalted of that month of love, could no longer take place, suddenly conquered him and bore him down, like a child who has had what he most desired snatched away from him.