While the artist was making some memoranda of these outlines, and
Mr. King was drawing I know not what auguries of hope from these purple
heights, a young lady seated upon a rock near by--a young lady just
stepping over the border-line of womanhood--had her eyes also fixed upon
those dreamy distances, with that look we all know so well, betraying
that shy expectancy of life which is unconfessed, that tendency to
maidenly reverie which it were cruel to interpret literally. At the
moment she is more interesting than the Catskills--the brown hair, the
large eyes unconscious of anything but the most natural emotion, the
shapely waist just beginning to respond to the call of the future--it is
a pity that we shall never see her again, and that she has nothing
whatever to do with our journey. She also will have her romance; fate
will meet her in the way some day, and set her pure heart wildly beating,
and she will know what those purple distances mean. Happiness, tragedy,
anguish--who can tell what is in store for her? I cannot but feel
profound sadness at meeting her in this casual way and never seeing her
again. Who says that the world is not full of romance and pathos and
regret as we go our daily way in it? You meet her at a railway station;
there is the flutter of a veil, the gleam of a scarlet bird, the lifting
of a pair of eyes--she is gone; she is entering a drawing-room, and stops
a moment and turns away; she is looking from a window as you pass--it is
only a glance out of eternity; she stands for a second upon a rock
looking seaward; she passes you at the church door--is that all? It is
discovered that instantaneous photographs can be taken.
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