"And, Karl," she went on, in joyous eagerness, "can't you see how the earth heaved a sigh right here a couple of hundred centuries ago—now don't tell me the park commissioners made them!—and that when it settled back from its sigh it never was quite the same again? It was a sigh of content—for the little slopes are so gentle. Gentle little hills are sighs of content, and bigger ones are determinations, and mountains—what are mountains, Karl?"
"Mountains are revolutionary instincts," he said, smiling at her fancifulness—Ernestine was always fanciful when she was happy.
"Yes, that's it. Sometimes I like the stormy upheavals which change the whole face of the earth, but this morning it's nice to have just the little sighs of content. And, dear—now turn around and look this way. You can't really see the lake at all—but you can tell by looking down that way that it is there."
"How can you tell, liebchen?" he asked, just to hear her talk.
"Oh, I don't know how you can. It's not scientific knowledge—it's—the other kind. The trees know that the lake is there."
"Let's walk down to the lake," he said. "I want to feel it on my face.
And oh, liebchen—it's good to have you tell about things like this."
As they walked she told him of all she saw: the people they met, and what she was sure the people were thinking about. Once she laughed aloud, and when he asked what she was laughing at, she said, "Oh, that chap we just passed was amusing. His eyes were saying—'My allowance is all gone and I haven't a red sou—but isn't it a bully day?'"
"There's no reason why I should be shut out from the world, Ernestine," he said vigorously, "when you have eyes for two."
"Why, that's just what I think!" she said, quickly, her voice low, and her heart beating fast.
The shadows upon the grass, the nursemaids and the babies, the boys and girls playing tennis, or just strolling around happy to be alive—she could make Karl see them all. And as they came in sight of the lake she began telling him how it looked in the distance, how it seemed at first just a cloud dropped down from the sky, but how, upon coming nearer, it was not the stuff that clouds are made of, but a live thing, a great live thing pulsing with joy in the morning sunshine. She told him how some of it was blue and some of it was green, while some of it was blue wedded to green, and some of it too elusive to have anything to do with the spectrum. "And, dearie—it is flirting with the sunlight—flirting shamefully; I'm almost ashamed for the lake, only it's so happy in its flirtation that perhaps it is not bothered with moral consciousness. But it seems to want the sunlight to catch it, and then it seems to want to get away, and sometimes a sunbeam gets a little wave that stayed too long and kisses it right here in open day—and isn't it awful—but isn't it nice?"