' And you reply: 'Well, I don't mind, if I may
smoke.' And thereafter the hours go idly by. Your friend at the
easel labours doggedly a little way off, in the wide shadow of the
tree; and yet farther, across a strait of glaring sunshine, you see
another painter, encamped in the shadow of another tree, and up to
his waist in the fern. You cannot watch your own effigy growing out
of the white trunk, and the trunk beginning to stand forth from the
rest of the wood, and the whole picture getting dappled over with the
flecks of sun that slip through the leaves overhead, and, as a wind
goes by and sets the trees a-talking, flicker hither and thither like
butterflies of light. But you know it is going forward; and, out of
emulation with the painter, get ready your own palette, and lay out
the colour for a woodland scene in words.
Your tree stands in a hollow paved with fern and heather, set in a
basin of low hills, and scattered over with rocks and junipers. All
the open is steeped in pitiless sunlight. Everything stands out as
though it were cut in cardboard, every colour is strained into its
highest key.
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