But sorrow is heavy and hard to bear in youth, when fullness of life throbs in every heart-beat, rebelling at every denial and refusing every pang; and there are moments when all that should console and soften suffering contributes to deepen and intensify it. As the graceful solitary figure walked wearily along the torrent bed in a network of shadows woven by the plane-tops, all the sunny beauty of gorge and peak, of lemon orchard and glowing pine-top and dream-soft olive haze, and all the purple splendour of sea and sky and blue bloom of distance wrought upon her with such power that every sense and faculty, uplifted and expanded, helped to put an edge on the anguish within her. The higher the rocky path turning from the level bed was, the greater the beauty grew, and the pain; every hanging wreath of geranium and scented myrtle, every blaze of cactus trailing down the rock walls, through which the steep, stair-like path climbed, impressed itself sharply upon her. She turned with a movement of impatience, and looked back, and every sunlit sail and turquoise shade on the purple sea and every shadow of the hills made itself acutely felt. And when the path led under the solemn shadow of olives, and the light misty foliage parted here and there to give glimpses of sea and red-roofed town and far headland, her heart was like to break; and yet the majesty of far-stretching mountains, the glory and beauty of land and sea, had never been more vividly sweet to her. For this is a strange thing, that the whole weight and power, the whole magic and mystery of beauty in Nature and Art, can only be felt in supreme moments of gladness or sorrow, when the mind and heart are full and every faculty is tense. The beauty deepens the pain with the very balm it brings, it magnifies the gladness with the very awe that chastens it. Now she knew what olive-trees meant; and they mean so much, in loveliness so subtle, so manifold in suggestion; they cannot be read through and taken in at a glance, except in emotional crises, when veils are lifted and faculties quickened. Yet there was comfort in those endless steps, that were in reality vine-terraces made on south-fronting declivities, and in the thought of the human patience and long labour of centuries, that had carried up and enriched every strip of soil on these hand-hewn ledges, and buttressed them solidly with rock till they glowed with the gladness of purple vintage and glory of emerald leaves. And here, in the olive shade, and there, backed by a rock terrace tangled in myrtle and white-blooming heath and the goblin foliage of prickly pear, were little red-roofed shrines, with frescoes telling the Seven Sorrows, blotched and dim, with scanty votive flowers withering in coarse earthen pots. The pathos of these humble, deserted shrines touched her; they seemed friendly in their silent desolation. Yet Mrs. Allonby, in her wild ascent the day before, had hardly seen them.