At this moment the mist, rolling away, left the sky blue and clear.  Among the valleys and around the trees flitted the shining fragments, —­a diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze.  The torrent rolled on toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with every color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic fires along the many-tinted scarf of waters.  The rugged ledge on which they stood was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken fabric.  Shrubs, already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands.  Their waving foliage, eager for the freshness of the water, drooped its tresses above the stream; the larches shook their light fringes and played with the pines, stiff and motionless as aged men.  This luxuriant beauty was foiled by the solemn colonnades of the forest-trees, rising in terraces upon the mountains, and by the calm sheet of the fiord, lying below, where the torrent buried its fury and was still.  Beyond, the sea hemmed in this page of Nature, written by the greatest of poets, Chance; to whom the wild luxuriance of creation when apparently abandoned to itself is owing.

The village of Jarvis was a lost point in the landscape, in this immensity of Nature, sublime at this moment like all things else of ephemeral life which present a fleeting image of perfection; for, by a law fatal to no eyes but our own, creations which appear complete—­the love of our heart and the desire of our eyes—­have but one spring-tide here below.  Standing on this breast-work of rock these three persons might well suppose themselves alone in the universe.

“What beauty!” cried Wilfrid.

“Nature sings hymns,” said Seraphita.  “Is not her music exquisite?  Tell me, Wilfrid, could any of the women you once knew create such a glorious retreat for herself as this?  I am conscious here of a feeling seldom inspired by the sight of cities, a longing to lie down amid this quickening verdure.  Here, with eyes to heaven and an open heart, lost in the bosom of immensity, I could hear the sighings of the flower, scarce budded, which longs for wings, or the cry of the eider grieving that it can only fly, and remember the desires of man who, issuing from all, is none the less ever longing.  But that, Wilfrid, is only a woman’s thought.  You find seductive fancies in the wreathing mists, the light embroidered veils which Nature dons like a coy maiden, in this atmosphere where she perfumes for her spousals the greenery of her tresses.  You seek the naiad’s form amid the gauzy vapors, and to your thinking my ears should listen only to the virile voice of the Torrent.”

“But Love is there, like the bee in the calyx of the flower,” replied Wilfrid, perceiving for the first time a trace of earthly sentiment in her words, and fancying the moment favorable for an expression of his passionate tenderness.

“Always there?” said Seraphita, smiling.  Minna had left them for a moment to gather the blue saxifrages growing on a rock above.