She was afraid to go on climbing, and she was terrified to go down by the way she had come.She was a slender girl in shorts—his lip curled as he reflected how addicted the English were to the wrong type of clothing for the region they were in—and her legs looked very long and slim, and were tanned to the pale hue of honey. Her hair was a soft brown cap that had intrigued him when he saw her for the first time two nights ago, in the lounge of the mountain hotel where she and her employer were staying.It was absolutely straight hair, and he supposed it was really mouse-coloured, but she had cut it in a short, straight fringe that drew attention to her large uneasy eyes. He began to wonder whether they were always uneasy... always apprehensive, as if she was always fearing the worst; and fearing the worst had become a kind of obsession with her.Of course, with an employer like hers it was not, perhaps, so surprising. The woman was a harridan, a kind of human harpy, and the girl was having her spirit slowly drained away from her.
