He looked up, his left hand at the cross.
"Look down. You are afraid of something, Pierre. What is it?"
"With your arms around my neck, there's nothing in the world I fear. I
never dreamed I could love anything more than the little girl who lay
in the snow, and died there that night."
"And I never dreamed I could smile at any man except the boy who lay
by me that night. And he died."
"What miracle saved you?"
She said: "It was wonderful, and yet very simple. You remember how the
tree crushed me down into the snow? Well, when the landslide moved, it
carried the tree before it; the weight of the trunk was lifted from
me. Perhaps it was a rock that struck me over the head then, for I
lost consciousness. The slide didn't bury me, but the rush carried me
before it like a stick before a wave, you see.
"When I woke I was almost completely covered with a blanket of debris,
but I could move my arms, and managed to prop myself up in a sitting
posture. It was there that my father and his searching party found me;
he had been combing that district all night.
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