But you are a LOVER of
nature, I know, and from what I have heard you say I believe you can do
what lovers cannot do,--make others feel as they do,--and that is what I
call being an artist. You write? You are a poet?"
"Oh dear, no," he said with a smile, half of relief and half of naive
superiority, "I'm a prose writer--on a daily newspaper."
To his surprise she was not disconcerted; rather a look of animation lit
up her face as she said brightly, "Oh, then, you can of course satisfy
my curiosity about something. You know the road from San Francisco to
the Cliff House. Except for the view of the sea-lions when one gets
there it's stupid; my brother says it's like all the San Francisco
excursions,--a dusty drive with a julep at the end of it. Well, one day
we were coming back from a drive there, and when we were beginning to
wind along the brow of that dreadful staring Lone Mountain Cemetery, I
said I would get out and walk, and avoid the obtrusive glitter of those
tombstones rising before me all the way. I pushed open a little gate and
passed in. Once among these funereal shrubs and cold statuesque lilies
everything was changed; I saw the staring tombstones no longer, for,
like them, I seemed to be always facing the sea. The road had vanished;
everything had vanished but the endless waste of ocean below me, and
the last slope of rock and sand. It seemed to be the fittest place for
a cemetery,--this end of the crumbling earth,--this beginning of the
eternal sea.
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