There was less diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor 's picture . They differed , indeed , in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom that dwelt upon her face , but agreed that it was gloom and alien from the natural temperament of their youthful friend . A certain fanciful person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both these pictures were parts of one design , and that the melancholy strength of feeling in Elinor 's countenance bore reference to the more vivid emotion -- or , as he termed it , the wild passion -- in that of Walter . Though unskilled in the art , he even began a sketch in which the action of the two figures was to correspond with their mutual expression . It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor 's face was assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture . Walter , on the other hand , instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas , became reserved and downcast , with no outward flashes of emotion , however it might be smouldering within . In course of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures , under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim them . It was enough . Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her presence . Time wore on , and the painter came again . He had been far enough to the north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills , and to look over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New England 's loftiest mountain . But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of his art . He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George , making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection . He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara , and there , again , had flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice , feeling that he could as soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous cataract . In truth , it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face instinct with thought , passion or suffering . With store of such his adventurous ramble had enriched him . The stern dignity of Indian chiefs , the dusky loveliness of Indian girls , the domestic life of wigwams , the stealthy march , the battle beneath gloomy pine trees , the frontier fortress with its garrison , the anomaly of the old French partisan bred in courts , but grown gray in shaggy deserts , -- such were the scenes and portraits that he had sketched . The glow of perilous moments , flashes of wild feeling , struggles of fierce power , love , hate , grief , frenzy -- in a word , all the worn-out heart of the old earth -- had been revealed to him under a new form . His portfolio was filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with immortality . He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had sought so far was found .
But amid stern or lovely nature , in the perils XXXXX the forest or its overwhelming peacefulness , still there had been two phantoms , the companions of his way .
among as by from into of than to under with