Birds, too, sang everywhere; crows were noisy in the taller pines; glimpses of wood-thrush and Veery in moist thickets; clear little ecstasies of bird-song from high branches, the strident chirring of red squirrels, the mysterious, muffled drumming of a cock-grouse far in woodland depths.
Where a mossy limestone ledge hung low over Whitewater Brook, Eris spread her handkerchief and sat down on it carefully, laying her book beside her.
Here the stillness was melodious with golden harmonies from a little waterfall.
There were no black flies or midges yet,—no exasperating deer-flies either. Only gilded ephemera dancing over the water, where, at intervals, some burly trout broke with a splash.
Green-clouded swallow-tail butterflies in floppy, erratic flight, sped through sunny glades. Overhead sailed the great yellow swallow-tail,—in aërial battle, sometimes with the Beauty of Camberwell, the latter rather ragged and faded from last summer’s gaiety, but with plenty of spirit left in her shabby wings.
Sun-spots glowed and waned; shadows flickered; water poured and glided between green banks, aglint with bubbles. The beauty of all things filled the young heart of Eris, reddened her lips, tormented her, almost hurt her with the desire for utterance.
If inexperience really has anything to express, it has no notion how to go about it.
Like vast, tinted, unreal clouds, her formless thoughts crowded her mind—guileless desire, innocent aspiration toward ineffable heights, ambition as chaste as immature.
And when in dreaming preoccupation the clouds took vague form, her unformed mind merely mirrored an unreal shape resembling herself—a magic dancing shape, ethereal, triumphant amid Olympian thunders of applause—a glittering shape, like hers, lovelier, facing the world from the jewelled splendour of the stage—a shadow-shape, gliding across the screen, worshipped in silence by a breathless multitude.
She opened her book. It was entitled: “How to Break into the Movies.” She read for a few moments, gave it up.