ll, what I
renounced was also great."

"We are quite sure you would do it all over again. You do not in the
least regret it, and your life has been a very happy one."

Again the youthful flush passed over the old lady's face. She put out
her hand--a small, delicate hand--as though searching for her husband's.
He had soon clasped it.

"Nerissa, you do not regret anything," he said. "You know quite well you
would do it all over again if we could go back to the beginning of
life."

Her sightless but still wonderfully expressive eyes looked up into his
face.

"With you to tempt me, Alphonse, how could I resist? Alas, human nature
is weak where the heart is concerned."

"Have you any children?" we asked.

"We have four, senor," replied the old lady. "And grand-children also.
Our children are all out in the world, and not one of them lives in
Lerida. As far as I was able I brought them up well, and tried to give
them a little bearing and refinement. But we have always been poor, and
poverty means limitation. They are all prospering, but in fairly humble
life. At rare intervals one or other pays us a visit; but time flies
quickly and they are soon gone again."

[Illustration: OLD GATEWAYS: LERIDA.]

Then we talked about France and the French. We happened to know many
places in common, and describing what they are to-day, enabled her to
realise the vast changes seventy years had worked. The old lady gave
many a sigh.

"Alphonse, it is all a new world," she said over and over again. "If we
went back to it we should be lost and strange. It is time we passed out
of life. But, senor, your visit has brought back a breath of that old
life to me. Those who come to us now are humble, and know nothing of our
past world. You almost make me feel young again; bring back lost
realities, when I was a lady, and had not thrown up all for love, and
dreamed not of a humble life of poverty. But, oh, I would renounce it
all again a second time for my husband's sake."

Who would have supposed such an idyll in the quiet town of Lerida? When
our Boot-cleaner in Ordinary had come to us that morning and received
his humble dole for the work done, who could have imagined that such a
romance, a poem in real life, was concealed in his history?

When we went back into the quiet streets the gloom had deepened;
twilight reigned; a soft glow was in the evening sky; one or two stars
were faintly shining. We could not lose the impression of the