"
"Whenever I see a sunset, I find it to be a splendid fact, _une
jouissance vraie, Monsieur_, to think that men can paint,--that these
shades, which are spontaneous in the heavens, and fleeting, can be
rivalled by us and made permanent,--that man is more potent than light."
"But you are all wrong in your _jouissance_."
She pouted her lip, and hung over the side in an attitude that it seemed
he had seen a hundred times before.
"That sunset, with all its breadth and splendor, is contained in every
pencil of light."
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."
"Ca et la,
Toute la journee,
Le vent vain va
En sa tournee,"
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.
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