[2] After an absence of three years, David Gordon returns to the farmhouse in Wastdale in the Lake District where he and two climbing companions, Arkwright and Hawke, had been in the habit of spending their Easter vacations.

He idolized her excessively, re-fashioning a second world in her image, and he had been unhappy when, after her mother had died eight months into their engagement, Kate had insisted on travelling alone to India to visit her uncle.

Kate says that she had never truly loved Gordon and that she had gone to India to escape the shackles of his infatuation for a while: "I always felt as if I was being lifted up reverently and set on a very high and a very small pedestal.

Hawke, seeking to be friendly, pulls out a bottle of brandy for warmth, asking Gordon to knock the neck off as the cork has been pushed in too deep.

Gordon, remembering Arkwright's death and recognising an opportunity in similar circumstances, slides a hidden knife along the bottle and drives it with all his strength into Hawke's wrist.

Two days later, Gordon's own body is found at the bottom of a gully at the water's edge, one hand still clutching a torn scrap of sodden paper.

An 1896 review in The Bookman noted that the novel had had an unfortunate history, with the publisher to whom Mason had sent the manuscript dissolving their partnership while he was away climbing in the Tyrol.