t 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
river bank, her face as red as her flaming shawl. I should have liked
to have sketched her in my album. It would have been an ecstatic
caricature. I turned my face away from her so as to be able 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 to me, eagerly seeking to
divine the sense of the obscure words, so as to penetrate my thoughts.
From time to time, she would exclaim: 'Oh! I understand, I understand.
This is very interesting.' We returned home.

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

"She was a brave creature, with an elastic sort of a soul, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium, like all women who are
spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be pickled in vinegary
innocence, though her heart still retained something of youth and of
girlish effervescence. She loved both nature and animals with a fervent
ardor, a love like old wine, mellow through age, with a sensual love
that she had never bestowed on men.

"One thing is certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its
side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open
mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the most violent
emotion.

"Poor solitary beings! Sad wanderers from table d'hote to table d'hote,
poor beings, ridiculous and lamentable, I love you ever since I became
acquainted with Miss Harriet!

"I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me,
but dared not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in
the morning with my box on my back, she would accompany me as far as
the end of the village, silent, but evidently struggling inwardly to
find words with which to begin a conversation. Then she would leave me
abruptly, and, with jaunty step, walk away quickly.

"One day, however, she plucked up courage:

"'I would like to see how you paint pictures? Will you show me? I have
been very curious.'

"And she colored up as though she had given utterance to words
extremely audacious.

"I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had commenced
a large picture.

"She