She lightly burlesqued the woes of a prima donna, with clasped hands and uplifted eyes.

“That’ll do very well,” Basil commented, “and it implies a reality that can’t be quite definitely spoken.  We come to Niagara in the patronizing spirit in which we approach everything nowadays, and for a few hours we have it our own way, and pay our little tributes of admiration with as much complacency as we feel in acknowledging the existence of the Supreme Being.  But after a while we are aware of some potent influence undermining our self-satisfaction; we begin to conjecture that the great cataract does not exist by virtue of our approval, and to feel that it will not cease when we go away.  The second day makes us its abject slaves, and on the third we want to fly from it in terror.  I believe some people stay for weeks, however, and hordes of them have written odes to Niagara.”

“I can’t understand it, at all,” said Isabel.  “I don’t wonder now that the town should be so empty this season, but that it should ever be full.  I wish we’d gone after our first look at the Falls from the suspension bridge.  How beautiful that was!  I rejoice in everything that I haven’t done.  I’m so glad I haven’t been in the Cave of the Winds; I’m so happy that Table Rock fell twenty years ago!  Basil, I couldn’t stand another rainbow today.  I’m sorry we went out on the Three Weird Sisters.  O, I shall dream about it! and the rush, and the whirl, and the dampness in one’s face, and the everlasting chirr-r-r-r of everything!”

She dipped suddenly upon his shoulder for a moment’s oblivion, and then rose radiant with a question:  “Why in the world, if Niagara is really what it seems to us now, do so many bridal parties come here?”

“Perhaps they’re the only people who’ve the strength to bear up against it, and are not easily dispersed and subjected by it.”

“But we’re dispersed and subjected.”

“Ah, my dear, we married a little late.  Who knows how it would be if you were nineteen instead of twenty-seven, and I twenty-five and not turned of thirty?”

“Basil, you’re very cruel.”

“No, no.  But don’t you see how it is?  We’ve known too much of life to desire any gloomy background for our happiness.  We’re quite contented to have things gay and bright about us.  Once we couldn’t have made the circle dark enough.  Well, my dear, that’s the effect of age.  We’re superannuated.”

“I used to think I was before we were married,” answered Isabel simply; “but now,” she added triumphantly, “I’m rescued from all that.  I shall never be old again, dearest; never, as long as you love me!”

They were about to enter the village, and he could not make any open acknowledgment of her tenderness; but her silken mantle (or whatever) slipped from her shoulder, and he embracingly replaced it, flattering himself that he had delicately seized this chance of an unavowed caress and not allowing (O such is the blindness of our sex!) that the opportunity had been yet more subtly afforded him, with the art which women never disuse in this world, and which I hope they will not forget in the next.