I did so.

"If you ever come to Spain, remember that my house and all that is in it
are yours."

"I shall never go to Spain."

"Perhaps you will one day to see Miss St. Clair," looking up in my face
with a bright smile of inextinguishable hope. "Good-bye for a year."

A few more days in Florence, a week in Venice, a day or two in Milan,
and we bade adieu to Italy. Land of beauty and mystery! when I recall
thy many forms of loveliness, the glorious shapes of gods and heroes,
serene and passionless in their white majesty of marble, the blessed
sweetness of saints and Madonnas shining down into my soul, I seem to
have been once in heaven and afterward shut out.

* * * * *

We were once more at home. Almost the first news that came to us from
abroad was of the terrible war between France and Germany. During the
protracted siege of Paris we were full of anxieties, but at its close we
received long letters from Madame Le Fort, giving many details of the
sufferings and privations of the siege, sorrowful enough for the most
part, but enlivened here and there with touches of the gay French humor
that nothing can subdue. There was a lively sketch of a Christmas dinner
ingeniously got up of several courses of donkey-meat. At New Year's the
choicest gift that a gentleman could make a lady was a piece of wheaten
bread. Afterward there was nothing in the house but rice and chocolate
bonbons, which they chewed sparingly, a little at a time. But they kept