Would I have been
satisfied with his _friendship_? Could I have kept within its narrow
limits and been content to see him lavish something still more
precious upon another?
We are frank at the tribunal of our own most intimate thought, and I
know what answer came whispering itself into my heart at this crisis.
I roused myself from my reverie and looked out at the changing scenery
before us. We were among the Thousand Islands.
Dark broken outlines of trees and rock, with here and there the
glimmer and twinkle of a light, the murmur of broken wavelets touching
the shore on every side, and the faint sound of happy human voices
somewhere in the misty distance, were what greeted my eyes and ears. I
could see nothing defined in the wild panorama about me, only that the
darkness was broken here and there, by a darker something, from which
tall pine-tops reared themselves majestically, less shrouded than the
rest. It was a soul-stirring sight, so gloomy, so misty, so silent. I
was almost sorry later to have looked upon the same scene by daylight,
although the hand of man has put an artificial touch here and there,
which, by the light of day, improves the general view.
After all, what are nature's grandest phases to us unless they suggest
something of our own selves? I have never been able to look upon
mountain or valley with other than my corporal eyes, and I have always
admired those places in a half-regretful way, where the print of human
footsteps is unknown.
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