A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky , which brought out every leaf and twig in dark , tremulous , elfin loveliness . `` Is n't that beautiful ? '' said Owen , pointing to it with the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind him . `` It 's so beautiful that it hurts me , '' said Anne softly . `` Perfect things like that always did hurt me -- I remember I called it ` the queer ache ' when I was a child . What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection ? Is it the pain of finality -- when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression ? '' `` Perhaps , '' said Owen dreamily , `` it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection . '' `` You seem to have a cold in the head . Better rub some tallow on your nose when you go to bed , '' said Miss Cornelia , who had come in through the little gate between the firs in time to catch Owen 's last remark . Miss Cornelia liked Owen ; but it was a matter of principle with her to visit any `` high-falutin '' language from a man with a snub . Miss Cornelia personated the comedy that ever peeps around the corner at the tragedy of life . Anne , whose nerves had been rather strained , laughed hysterically , and even Owen smiled . Certainly , sentiment and passion had a way of shrinking out of sight in Miss Cornelia 's presence . And yet to Anne nothing seemed quite as hopeless and dark and painful as it had seemed a few moments before . But sleep was far from her eyes that night . CHAPTER 27 ON THE SAND BAR Owen Ford left Four Winds the next morning . In the evening Anne went over to see Leslie , but found nobody . The house was locked and there was no light in any window . It looked like a home left soulless .
Leslie did not run over XXXXX the following day -- which Anne thought a bad sign .
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