e of ease to
flesh and spirit alike. All is enjoyment, everything charms. The balmy
air, laden with the perfume of grasses and the smell of seaweed, soothes
the olfactory sense with its wild fragrance, soothes the palate with its
sea savor, soothes the mind with its pervading sweetness.

"We were now walking along the edge of the cliff, high above the
boundless sea which rolled its little waves below us at a distance of a
hundred metres. And we drank in with open mouth and expanded chest that
fresh breeze, briny from kissing the waves, that came from the ocean and
passed across our faces.

"Wrapped in her plaid shawl, with a look of inspiration as she faced the
breeze, the English woman gazed fixedly at the great sun ball as it
descended toward the horizon. Far off in the distance a three-master in
full sail was outlined on the blood-red sky and a steamship, somewhat
nearer, passed along, leaving behind it a trail of smoke on the horizon.
The red sun globe sank slowly lower and lower and presently touched the
water just behind the motionless vessel, which, in its dazzling
effulgence, looked as though framed in a flame of fire. We saw it plunge,
grow smaller and disappear, swallowed up by the ocean.

"Miss Harriet gazed in rapture at the last gleams of the dying day. She
seemed longing to embrace the sky, the sea, the whole landscape.

"She murmured: 'Aoh! I love--I love' I saw a tear in her eye. She
continued: 'I wish I were a little bird, so that I could mount up into
the firmament.'

"She remained standing as I had often before seen her, perched on the
cliff, her face as red as her shawl. I should have liked to have sketched
her in my album. It would have been a caricature of ecstasy.

"I turned away so as not to laugh.

"I then spoke to her of painting as I would have done to a fellow artist,
using the technical terms common among the devotees of the profession.
She listened attentively, eagerly seeking to divine the meaning of the
terms, so as to understand my thoughts. From time to time she would
exclaim:

"'Oh! I understand, I understand. It is very interesting.'

"We returned home.

"The next day, on seeing me, she approached me, cordially holding out her
hand; and we at once became firm friends.

"She was a good creature who had a kind of soul on springs, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium like all women who are
spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be preserved in a