It was not long, however, before I came to
the conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almost
certainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the string
in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail'
of old.
* * * * *
But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly
lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_,
she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux
pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and
varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers
rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no
uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a
seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and
all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorous
and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight,
a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its
transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the
goat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there.
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