“After the meal, we rose from the table together and walked leisurely across the court; then, attracted by the fiery glow which the setting sun cast over the surface of the sea, I opened the outside gate which faced in the direction of the cliff, and we walked on side by side, as satisfied as any two persons could be who have just learned to understand and penetrate each other’s motives and feelings.
“It was a misty, relaxing evening, one of those enjoyable evenings which impart happiness to mind and body alike. All is joy, all is charm. The luscious and balmy air, loaded with the perfume of grass, with the perfumes of grass-wrack, with the odour of the wild flowers, caresses the nostrils with its wild perfume, the palate with its salty savour, the soul with a penetrating sweetness. We were going to the brink of the abyss which overlooked the vast sea, which rolled its little waves below us, at a distance of less than a hundred metres.
“We drank, with open mouth and expanded chest, that fresh breeze from the ocean which glides slowly over the skin, salted as it is by long contact with the waves.
“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 bloodred 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: ‘Ah! 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 spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be preserved in vinegary innocence, though her heart still retained something of youth and of girlish effervescence. She loved both nature and animals with a fervent ardour, a love like old wine, mellow through age, with a sensual love that she had never bestowed on men.
“One thing is certain: a bitch feeding her pups, a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird’s nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, and no feathers, made her quiver with the most violent emotion.
“Poor solitary beings! Sad wanderers from table d’hôte to table d’hôte, poor beings, ridiculous and lamentable, I love you ever since I became acquainted with Miss Harriet!
“I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but dared not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in the morning with my box on my back, she would accompany me to the end of the village, silent, but evidently struggling inwardly to find words with which to begin a conversation. Then she would leave me abruptly, and, with jaunty step, walk away quickly.
“One day, however, she plucked up courage:
“ ‘I would like to see how you paint pictures? Will you show me? I have been very curious.’
“And she coloured up as though she had given utterance to words extremely audacious.
“I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had commenced a large picture.
“She remained standing near me, following all my gestures with concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing, perhaps, that she was disturbing me, she said to me: ‘Thank you,’ and walked away.
“But in a short time she became more familiar, and accompanied me every day, with visible pleasure. She carried her folding stool under her arm, would not consent to my carrying it, and she sat by my side. She would remain there for hours immovable and mute, following with her eye the point of my brush in its every movement. When I would obtain, by a large splatch of colour spread on with a knife, a striking and unexpected effect, she would, in spite of herself, give vent to a half-suppressed ‘Oh!’ of astonishment, of joy, of admiration. She had the most tender respect for my canvases, an almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a part of nature’s divine work. My studies appeared to her as a species of holy pictures, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of converting me.
“Oh! He was a queer creature, this God of hers. He was a sort of village philosopher without any great resources, and without great power; for she always pictured him to herself as a being
