all, and we went in together.
Now, you know, I would have remained there all night without even
looking for such an obvious way of arousing the gatekeeper."

"Yes," he continued, in answer to an appreciative comment from his
listener, "you would have enjoyed it,--any one with a soul would have
enjoyed it. And further adventures were in store for me in that
ancient town. I remember particularly a girl who waited on the table
at my _albergo_ and accompanied me at times on my tours of inspection.
From her I learned more of the history of the place, and upon her I
practised most diligently my Italian. There was one mystery to which
she would come back again and again. If I was an American, and poor,
how did it happen that I was not an artist? She would turn her lovely
eyes upon me twenty times a day and ask me this question. A charming
experience, was it not? Long afterward I met an American professor on
one of the boats in Holland, and when we compared notes on our travels,
I discovered that he remembered that girl, too, and her eyes. Just
think of the number of romantic young travellers upon whom she had
turned them in that appealing way of hers!"

As his companion listened to this recital, he was impressed not so much
by the story itself as by the essential happiness of the narrator.
Here was a nature as untrammelled as the wind, that delighted to roam
from land to land. Local interests, people, events, might hold him for
a time, but presently he would be gone in search of new adventures. If
he loved Felicity Wycliffe, Leigh reflected, it was only as a wanderer
loves.

Cardington was laughing in his peculiar fashion. "You will say that my
little story has a disappointing sequel; but, after all, perhaps it is
less commonplace as it is. She will remain enshrined in my memory, and
in the memory of those other travellers, as we saw her then, always
young and beautiful, and always turning upon us those lovely, enquiring
eyes. And, by the way, it is strange, is it not, that Miss Wycliffe
should have eyes similar to those of my young guide in Assisi? As far
as I know, she is of pure New England ancestry, and one does not meet
very often in this climate a glance that suggests nocturnal mystery.
No, no. The women here are different, as a rule. I remember her
mother; she was something like, but in less perfection."

Leigh, fearing that he might perhaps say too much, said nothing at all
by way of comment. Cardi