the trailing jessamine; but the
bird could not sing the silence away, and spring with all her abundance
could not hide this spiritual autumn.

Dreams, a land of dreams, where even the high noon itself was dreamy; a
melting together of earth and air and water in one eternal gentleness of
revery! Whence came the melancholy of this? I had seen woods as solitary
and streams as silent, I had felt nature breathing upon me a greater
awe; but never before such penetrating and quiet sadness. I only know
that this is the perpetual mood of those Southern shores, those rivers
that wind in from the ocean among their narrowing marshes and their
hushed forests, and that it does not come from any memory of human hopes
and disasters, but from the elements themselves.

So did we move onward, passing in due time another bridge and a few
dwellings and some excavations, until the river grew quite narrow, and
there ahead was the landing at Live Oaks, with negroes idly watching for
us, and a launch beside the bank, and Charley and Hortense Rieppe about
to step into it. Another man stood up in the launch and talked to them
where they were on the landing platform, and pointed down the river as
we approached; but evidently he did not point at us. I looked hastily
to see what he was indicating to them, but I could see nothing save the
solitary river winding away between the empty woods and marshes.

So this was Hortense Rieppe! It was not wonderful that she had caused
young John to lose his heart, or, at any rate, his head and his senses;
nor was it wonderful that Charley, with his little bulging eyes, should
take her in his launch whenever she would go; the wonderful thing was
that John, at his age and with his nature, should have got over it--if
he had got over it! I felt it tingling in me; any man would. Steel wasp
indeed!

She was slender, and oh, how well dressed! She watched the passengers
get off the boat, and I could not tell you from that first sight of her
what her face was like, but only her hair, the sunburnt amber of its
masses making one think of Tokay or Chateau-Yquem. She was watching me,
I felt, and then saw; and as soon as I was near she spoke to me without
moving, keeping one gloved hand lightly posed upon the railing of the
platform, so that her long arm was bent with perfect ease and grace.
I swear that none but a female eye could have detected any toboggan
fire-escape.

Her words dropped with the same calculated deliber