ns feasting under some trees; scene, nowhere in particular; time
and hour, problematical. Female figure, a big _brune_; young man
reclining on his elbow; old man drinking. An empty sky, with no end of
expression. The whole stupendous in color, drawing, feeling. Artist
uncertain; supposed to be Robinson, 1900. That's about the programme.

After dinner the Captain began to look out across the bay, and, noticing
the uprising of a little breeze, expressed a wish to cruise about for an
hour or two. He proposed to us to walk along the shore to a point a
couple of miles northward, and there meet the boat. His daughter having
agreed to this proposition, he set off with the lightened pannier, and
in less than half an hour we saw him standing out from shore. Miss Blunt
and I did not begin our walk for a long, long time. We sat and talked
beneath the trees. At our feet, a wide cleft in the hills--almost a
glen--stretched down to the silent beach. Beyond lay the familiar
ocean-line. But, as many philosophers have observed, there is an end to
all things. At last we got up. Miss Blunt said, that, as the air was
freshening, she believed she would put on her shawl. I helped her to
fold it into the proper shape, and then I placed it on her shoulders,
her crimson shawl over her black silk sack. And then she tied her veil
once more about her neck, and gave me her hat to hold, while she
effected a partial redistribution of her hair-pins. By way of being
humorous, I placed her hat on my own head; at which she was kind enough
to smile, as with downcast face and uplifted elbows she fumbled among
her braids. And then she shook out the creases of her dress, and drew on
her gloves; and finally she said, "Well!"--that inevitable tribute to
time and morality which follows upon even the mildest forms of
dissipation. Very slowly it was that we wandered down the little glen.
Slowly, too, we followed the course of the narrow and sinuous beach, as
it keeps to the foot of the low cliffs. We encountered no sign of human
life. Our conversation I need hardly repeat. I think I may trust it to
the keeping of my memory: I think I shall be likely to remember it. It
was all very sober and sensible,--such talk as it is both easy and
pleasant to remember; it was even prosaic,--or, at least, if there was a
vein of poetry in it, I should have defied a listener to put his finger
on it. There was no exaltation of feeling or utterance on either side;
on one side, indee