“That is why I am here.  I shall not be able to go to Paris.  I am bitterly disappointed, but monsignore has made other plans for me.  I am to go to Vienna to visit my aunt, whose husband is our ambassador there.  The tour to Paris is postponed till the autumn.”

Evidently monsignore had heard of the little heretic maiden, and he was going to remove his ward from temptation.  I was infinitely obliged to him.

A desultory conversation followed, carried on principally by the young people, and then the count said, “Miss St. Clair tells me that you have visited the Uffizi and Pitti galleries.  May I not go with you somewhere to-morrow?—­to La Certose or San Miniato, for instance?”

“Thank you,” I replied:  “we are so exhausted with sight-seeing, Miss St. Clair and I, that we shall stay in all day to-morrow, and we shall be happy to see you once in the afternoon or evening, as may be most convenient for you.”

I did not like to be hard and cross to the dear boy whom my heart yearned over, but I felt as much bound to “make an effort” as if I had been a veritable Dombey.

The call lasted afternoon and evening:  it was only the change of a particle.  I could not reproduce the innocent talk, half gay, half sad, of this long interview, but before he went away the count drew me aside:  “Will you give this to Miss St. Clair when I am gone?”

I unfolded the package:  it contained a photograph of himself and a small painting which he had executed of the Coliseum on the night of the illumination.  “Yes.”

“And will you send me her photograph from Paris?  I will have it copied by the best miniature-painter in Rome and put in a locket set with diamonds,” said the boy enthusiastically.

“I cannot promise.”

“Do you think I could be of any use to her father?  Not to win his favor, you understand, but I should be so happy to do anything to serve her or her friends.  Can’t you tell me now?”

“No.  Mr. St. Clair does not need assistance in any way that I know.”

In spite of the boy’s earnestness, the idea of his offering patronage to the mature and independent American struck me as irresistibly ludicrous.

“But you will tell him all about me.”

“Yes.”

“I shall learn to speak English—­I have begun already—­and in a year I shall be in America.  Will you write your address for me on this card?”

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.