She glanced up and laughed.
"Oh, yes! a part of its possibilities. Which proves?"--
"That color is an attribute of light and an achievement of man."
"Cà et là,
Toute la journée,
Le vent vain va
En sa tournée,"
hummed the girl, with a careless dismissal of the subject.
Mr. Raleigh shut up the note-book in which he had been writing, and restored it to his pocket. She turned about and broke off her song.
"There is the moon on the other side," she said, "floating up like a great bubble of light. She and the sun are the scales of a balance, I think; as one ascends, the other sinks."
"There is a richness in the atmosphere, when sunset melts into moonrise, that makes one fancy it enveloping the earth like the bloom on a plum."
"And see how it has powdered the sea! The waters look like the wings of the papillon bleu."
"It seems that you love the sea."
"Oh, certainly. I have thought that we islanders were like those Chinese who live in great tanka-boats on the rivers; only our boat rides at anchor. To climb up on the highest land, and see yourself girt with fields of azure enamelled in sheets of sunshine and fleets of sails, and lifted against the horizon, deep, crystalline, and translucent as a gem,--that makes one feel strong in isolation, and produces keen races. Don't you think so?"
"I think that isolation causes either vivid characteristics or idiocy, seldom strong or healthy ones; and I do not value race."