“Then, without warning, she would break off in the middle of a sentence, spring up from her seat and walk away so rapidly and so strangely that I was at my wits’ ends to discover whether I had done or said anything to displease or wound her.

“I finally came to the conclusion that those were her normal manners, somewhat modified no doubt in my honor during the first days of our acquaintance.

“When she returned to the farm, after walking for hours on the windy coast, her long curls often hung straight down, as if their springs had been broken.  This had hitherto seldom given her any concern, and she would come to dinner without embarrassment all dishevelled by her sister, the breeze.

“But now she would go to her room and arrange the untidy locks, and when I would say, with familiar gallantry, which, however, always offended her: 

“‘You are as beautiful as a star to-day, Miss Harriet,’ a blush would immediately rise to her cheeks, the blush of a young girl, of a girl of fifteen.

“Then she would suddenly become quite reserved and cease coming to 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.