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:

"'Oh! I understand, I understand. It is very interesting.'

"We returned home.

"The next day, on seeing me, she approached me, cordially holding out her
hand; and we at once became firm friends.

"She was a good creature who had a kind of soul on springs, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium like all women who are