“You know he's the son of the millionaire,” continued the landlord, not at all unwilling to display the importance of the habitues of Crystal Spring, “though they've quarreled and don't get on together.”
“I know,” said the lady languidly, “and, if any one comes here for ME, ask them to wait in the parlor until I come.”
Then, submitting herself and her dusty habit to the awkward ministration of the Irish chambermaid, she was quite thrilled with a delightful curiosity. She vaguely remembered that she had heard something of the Harcourt family discord,—but that was the divorced daughter surely! And this young man was Harcourt's son, and they had quarreled! A quarrel with a frank, open, ingenuous fellow like that—a mere boy—could only be the father's fault. Luckily she had never mentioned the name of Harcourt! She would not now; he need not know that it was his father who had originated the party; why should she make him uncomfortable for the few moments they were together?
There was nothing of this in her face as she descended and joined him. He thought that face handsome, well-bred, and refined. But this breeding and refinement seemed to him—in his ignorance of the world, possibly—as only a graceful concealment of a self of which he knew nothing; and he was not surprised to find that her pretty gray eyes, now no longer hidden by her veil, really told him no more than her lips. He was a little afraid of her, and now that she had lost her naive enthusiasm he was conscious of a vague remorsefulness for his interrupted work in the forest. What was he doing here? He who had avoided the cruel, selfish world of wealth and pleasure,—a world that this woman represented,—the world that had stood apart from him in the one dream of his life—and had let Loo die! His quickly responsive face darkened.
“I am afraid I really interrupted you up there,” she said gently, looking in his face with an expression of unfeigned concern; “you were at work of some kind, I know, and I have very selfishly thought only of myself. But the whole scene was so new to me, and I so rarely meet any one who sees things as I do, that I know you will forgive me.” She bent her eyes upon him with a certain soft timidity. “You are an artist?”
“I am afraid not,” he said, coloring and smiling faintly; “I don't think I could draw a straight line.”
“Don't try to; they're not pretty, and the mere ability to draw them straight or curved doesn't make an artist. But you are a LOVER of nature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can do what lovers cannot do,—make others feel as they do,—and that is what I call being an artist. You write? You are a poet?”
“Oh dear, no,” he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naive superiority, “I'm a prose writer—on a daily newspaper.”
To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation lit up her face as she said brightly, “Oh, then, you can of course satisfy my curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco to the Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one gets there it's stupid; my brother says it's like all the San Francisco excursions,—a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one day we were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning to wind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, I said I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of those tombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate and passed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilies everything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for, like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished; everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, and the last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place for a cemetery,—this end of the crumbling earth,—this beginning of the eternal sea. There! don't think that idea my own, or that I thought of it then. No,—I read it all afterwards, and that's why I'm telling you this.”
She could not help smiling at his now attentive face, and went on: “Some days afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old, and there was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt,—only far more beautiful and touching, as you shall see, for I cut it out of the paper and have kept it. It seemed to me that it must be some personal experience,—as if the writer had followed some dear friend there,—although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness of true and delicate feeling. It impressed me so much that I went back there twice or thrice, and always seemed to move to the rhythm of that beautiful funeral march—and I am afraid, being a woman, that I wandered around among the graves as though I could find out who it was that had been sung so sweetly, and if it were man or woman. I've got it here,” she said, taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket and picking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper; “and I thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer, and perhaps know something of his history. For I believe he has one. There! that is only a part of the article, of course, but it is the part that interested me. Just read from there,” she pointed, leaning partly over his shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair, “to the end; it isn't long.”