"I prefer live
creatures. Their anatomical and physiological
peculiarities have been studied by others, and
volumes have been written about them. It is
their psychological traits, ii you will allow the
expression, which interest me, and those I can
only get at while they are alive."
"How delightful!"
Some minutes later they were all on their way
to the Parsonage. The sun, in spite of its mid-
summer wakefulness, was getting red-eyed and
drowsy, and the purple mists which hung in
scattered fragments upon the forest below had
lost something of their deep-tinged brilliancy.
But Augusta, quite blind to the weakened light
effects, looked out upon the broad landscape in
ecstasy, and, appealing to her more apathetic
companions, invited them to share her joy at the
beauty of the faint-flushed summer night.
"You are getting quite dithyrambic, my
dear," remarked Arnfinn, with an air of cousinly
superiority, which he felt was eminently
becoming to him; and Augusta looked up with
quick surprise, then smiled in an absent way,
and forgot what she had been saying. She had
no suspicion but that her enthusiasm had been
all for the sunset.
III.
In a life so outwardly barren and monotonous
as Augusta's--a life in which the small external
events were so firmly interwoven with the
subtler threads of yearnings, wants, and desires
--the introduction of so large and novel a fact
as Marcus Strand would naturally produce some
perceptible result.
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