rom this, you are of
course as trivial, if you like, at Niagara, as anywhere.

Slowly Isabel became aware that the sacred grove beside the fall was
profaned by some very common presences indeed, that tossed bits of stone
and sticks into the consecrated waters, and struggled for handkerchiefs
and fans, and here and there put their arms about each other's waists,
and made a show of laughing and joking. They were a picnic party of
rude, silly folks of the neighborhood, and she stood pondering them in
sad wonder if anything could be worse, when she heard a voice saying to
Basil, "Take you next, Sir? Plenty of light yet, and the wind's down
the river, so the spray won't interfere. Make a capital picture of you;
falls in the background." It was the local photographer urging them to
succeed the young couple he had just posed at the brink: the gentleman
was sitting down, with his legs crossed and his hands elegantly
disposed; the lady was standing at his side, with one arm thrown lightly
across his shoulder, while with the other hand she thrust his cane into
the ground; you could see it was going to be a splendid photograph.

Basil thanked the artist, and Isabel said, trusting as usual to his
sympathy for perception of her train of thought, "Well, I'll never try
to be high-strung again. But shouldn't you have thought, dearest, that I
might expect to be high-strung with success at Niagara if anywhere?" She
passively followed him into the long, queer, downward-sloping edifice on
the border of the grove, unflinchingly mounted the car that stood ready,
and descended the incline. Emerging into the light again, she found
herself at the foot of the fall by whose top she had just stood. At
first she was glad there were other people down there, as if she and
Basil were not enough to bear it alone, and she could almost have spoken
to the two hopelessly pretty brides, with parasols and impertinent
little boots, whom their attendant husbands were helping over the sharp
and slippery rocks, so bare beyond the spray, so green and mossy within
the fall of mist. But in another breath she forgot them; as she looked
on that dizzied sea, hurling itself from the high summit in huge white
knots, and breaks and masses, and plunging into the gulf beside her,
while it sent continually up a strong voice of lamentation, and crawled
away in vast eddies, with somehow a look of human terror, bewilderment,
and pain. It was bathed in snowy vapor to its crest,