that she was unacquainted
with the art of making conversation. "But what I mean," she went on,
"is that there is no place--no end--to reach." She looked back over her
shoulder toward the west, where the trees marked the sky line, and an
expression of loss and dissatisfaction came over her face. "You
see," she said, apologetically, "I'm used to different things--to the
mountains. I have never been where I could not see them before in my
life."

"Ah, I see! I suppose it is odd to look up and find them not there."

"It's like being lost, this not having anything around you. At least,
I mean," she continued slowly, as if her thought could not easily put
itself in words,--"I mean it seems as if a part of the world had been
taken down. It makes you feel lonesome, as if you were living after the
world had begun to die."

"You'll get used to it in a few days. It seems very beautiful to me
here. And then you will have so much life to divert you."

"Life? But there is always that everywhere."

"I mean men and women."

"Oh! Still, I am not used to them. I think I might be not--not very
happy with them. They might think me queer. I think I would like to show
your sister the mountains."

"She has seen them often."

"Oh, she told me. But I don't mean those pretty green hills such as we
saw coming here. They are not like my mountains. I like mountains that
go beyond the clouds, with terrible shadows in the hollows, and belts
of snow lying in the gorges where the sun cannot reach, and the snow is
blue in the sunshine, or shining till you think it is silver, and the
mist so wonderful all about it, changing each moment and drifting up and
down, that you cannot tell what name to give the colors. These mountains
of yours here in the East are so quiet; mine are shouting all the time,
with the pines and the rivers. The echoes are so loud in the valley that
sometimes, when the wind is rising, we can hardly hear a man talk unless
he raises his voice. There are four cataracts near where I live, and
they all have different voices, just as people do; and one of them
is happy--a little white cataract--and it falls where the sun shines
earliest, and till night it is shining. But the others only get the sun
now and then, and they are more noisy and cruel. One of them is always
in the shadow, and the water looks black. That is partly because the
rocks all underneath it are black. It falls down twenty great ledges in
a gorge with black side