“‘Oh! monsieur, you understand nature as a living thing.’

“I colored and was more touched by that compliment than if it had come from a queen.  I was captured, conquered, vanquished.  I could have embraced her, upon my honor.

“I took my seat at table beside her as usual.  For the first time she spoke, thinking aloud: 

“‘Oh!  I do love nature.’

“I passed her some bread, some water, some wine.  She now accepted these with a little smile of a mummy.  I then began to talk about the scenery.

“After the meal we rose from the table together and walked leisurely across the courtyard; then, attracted doubtless by the fiery glow which the setting sun cast over the surface of the sea, I opened the gate which led to the cliff, and we walked along side by side, as contented as two persons might be who have just learned to understand and penetrate each other’s motives and feelings.

“It was one of those warm, soft evenings which impart a sense 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: