Since then I have been able to gather some idea of Hester's appearance from various sources, and I own that the situation has always seemed to me picturesque in the extreme: the tall, gaunt, silent woman in her severe, dull dress striding through the pastures, and behind her, stealthily as an Indian--or an Italian avenger--the dark, lovely child, now crouching amongst the bayberry, now defiantly erect, but always graceful as a panther, her hair loose on her slender shoulders. I cannot forbear to add that in this picture of mine, a great vivid letter burns on the woman's breast, inseparable from her name, of course. But this only adds to the sombre power of the picture. It is a thing for Vedder to paint, in witchlike browns and greys. Margarita had never made this journey but once, but she followed her old trail with the precision of a savage. I myself have gone that way once only: and then but half of the distance, or a little less. It was not in bayberry time, but through a land smooth and blue-white with snow and with a terror pulling my heart out that I am sure I could never endure again. How we flew over the snow! It was all a ghastly glare, a dancing sun in a turquoise sky ... No, no, one does not live through such things twice and I hate even the memory of it. Even with the boiling geyser rumbling behind me, filling the baths with comfort and oblivion, I shiver to my very marrow. After they had followed a certain marshy band of vivid green for several pasture-lengths, Margarita shook her head slightly, retraced her steps and stopped at a point where three or four great flat stones made a sort of causeway across the glistening, muddy strip, and Roger, following her as she jumped lightly over, saw that they stood upon a little rocky promontory joined only by this strange bit of marsh to the mainland. The strip was here not a hundred feet wide, and winding in on either side of this two little inlets crept sluggishly along and lost themselves in the marsh. The promontory was there very barren and it seemed to Roger that the girl was going to lead him out into the shallow cove that faced them, but a few more steps showed him that just here the point of land curved around this cove, which swept far inland, and broadened out wonderfully into several acres of meadow-hay dotted with sparse, stunted cedars.