watch
me paint. I thought, 'This is only a fit of temper; it will blow over.'
But it did not always blow over, and when I spoke to her she would answer
me either with affected indifference or with sullen annoyance.

"She became by turns rude, impatient and nervous. I never saw her now
except at meals, and we spoke but little. I concluded at length that I
must have offended her in some way, and, accordingly, I said to her one
evening:

"'Miss Harriet, why is it that you do not act toward me as formerly? What
have I done to displease you? You are causing me much pain!'

"She replied in a most comical tone of anger:

"'I am just the same with you as formerly. It is not true, not true,' and
she ran upstairs and shut herself up in her room.

"Occasionally she would look at me in a peculiar manner. I have often
said to myself since then that those who are condemned to death must look
thus when they are informed that their last day has come. In her eye
there lurked a species of insanity, an insanity at once mystical and
violent; and even more, a fever, an aggravated longing, impatient and
impotent, for the unattained and unattainable.

"Nay, it seemed to me there was also going on within her a struggle in
which her heart wrestled with an unknown force that she sought to master,
and even, perhaps, something else. But what do I know? What do I know?

"It was indeed a singular revelation.

"For some time I had commenced to work, as soon as daylight appeared, on
a picture the subject of which was as follows:

"A deep ravine, enclosed, surmounted by two thickets of trees and vines,
extended into the distance and was lost, submerged in that milky vapor,
in that cloud like cotton down that sometimes floats over valleys at
daybreak. And at the extreme end of that heavy, transparent fog one saw,
or, rather, surmised, that a couple of human beings were approaching, a
human couple, a youth and a maiden, their arms interlaced, embracing each
other, their heads inclined toward each other, their lips meeting.

"A first ray of the sun, glistening through the branches, pierced that
fog of the dawn, illuminated it with a rosy reflection just behind the
rustic lovers, framing their vague shadows in a silvery background. It
was well done; yes, indeed, well done.

"I was working on the declivity which led to the Valley of Etretat. On
this particular morning I had, by chance, the sort of floating vapor
which I needed. Suddenly somethi