"It is almost too exquisite to look at," said Mrs. Denham. "It makes one doubt one's own eyes."
"I saw it once," Lynde said, "when I thought the effect even finer. I was induced by some pleasant English tourists to stop over night at Magland, and we walked up here in the moonrise. You can't imagine anything so lovely as that long strip of gossamer unfolding itself to the moonlight. There was an English artist with us, who made a sketch of the fall; but he said a prettier thing about it than his picture."
"What was that?" inquired Miss Ruth.
"He called it Penelope's web, because it is always being unravelled and reknitted."
"That artist mistook his profession."
"Folks often do," said Lynde. "I know painters who ought to be poets, and poets who ought to be bricklayers."
"Why bricklayers?"
"Because I fancy that bricklaying makes as slight drain on the imagination as almost any pursuit in life. Speaking of poets and waterfalls, do you remember Byron's daring simile in Manfred? He compares a certain waterfall at the foot of the Jungfrau to the tail of the pale horse ridden by Death in the Apocalypse. Mrs. Denham," said Lynde abruptly, "the marquis tells me there's a delightful short cut, through the rocks here, which strikes into the road a mile further on."
"Let us take it then," answered Mrs. Denham, settling herself comfortably in the cushions.
"It is a foot-path," explained Lynde.