An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his
path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his
palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds
are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on
the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by
pats of indigo and vermilion.
So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the
background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is
always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line
of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober
that illumined my own grassy sward.
Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking
his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody
else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise
moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people;
and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective,
particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest
places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and
accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me
in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry
on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.
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