We looked at the little reeded river, so demure in her morning mists, so
discreet and hushed among her willows, and in our friend's eyes, and by
the magic of his fanciful tongue, we saw her tripping along to dangerous
conjunctions with resounding rock-bedded streams, adventurously taking
hands with swirling, impulsive floods, fragrant with water-flowers and
laden with old forests, and at length, through the strange, starlit
hills, sweeping out into some moonlit estuary of the all-enfolding sea.

"Aren't you glad we walked, Colin?" I said, a mile or two after. "You
are, of course, a great artist; but I don't remember you ever having a
thought quite so fine and romantic as that, do you?"

"How strange it must be," said Colin, after a while, "to have
beauty--beautiful thoughts, beautiful pictures--merely as a recreation;
not as one's business, I mean. And the world is full of people who have
no need to sell their beautiful thoughts!"




CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH WE CATCH UP WITH SUMMER


Some eminent wayfarers--one peculiarly beloved--have discoursed on the
romantic charm of maps. But they have dwelt chiefly on the suggestiveness
of them before the journey: these unknown names of unknown places, in
types of mysteriously graduated importance--what do they stand for? These