Certosa is a large and beautiful place that tops a hill, about three miles outside of Florence, and I enjoyed going there, although it made me feel sad. I suppose my feeling was silly, but the order is an ancient one; they take in no new members, and all that are left to rattle around in the very big place are a half dozen tottering old men, whose hands shake as they unlock the heavy doors for you, and whose breath grows short as they travel the long stairs that take one up to the Capella Prima, which means the main chapel. I noticed that the white-bearded, white-haired and white-robed monk who took us around talked almost incessantly, and Sam told me why. “Quiet almost all the time,” he said, “from some vow or other, and I guess the poor old chaps feel like letting out when they can.” I said I thought it was too bad, and that it was pleasanter to think of men getting old with their families around them, and Sam thought so too. We were out in the Cloister of Certosa. Cloisters are open squares that are surrounded by the buildings to which they belong, and they are in all the churches and monasteries and are always most lovely. After the sifted, gray light of a church, the sunlight and the beautiful green growing things that fill these spaces are almost too lovely. And usually a white or brown garbed monk--sometimes wearing no more than sandals, on his feet--stands in some archway or wanders back and forth in a loggia and this adds to the picture. The cloister we looked on was centered by a well with a wrought iron top that has been copied a great deal, and after Sam had spoken of it, he--as he whittled at a stick--asked me whether I intended to marry. I said I hoped so, but that with women a lot depended upon whether any man asked them. That made him laugh, and he put his hand over mine. “Some one’s bound to ask you,” he said, as he curled up my fingers in my palm and then undid them again, to do it all over--sometimes Sam is _very_ restless--“but, Jane, do tell me any old thing won’t do!” “Oh, I’d have to _like_ him,” I said, for although I knew little about love, I felt _certain_ of that. Then Mr. Wake appeared, and he frowned on us terribly. “Look here, children,” he said, “you know you mustn’t hold hands in a cloister--” (I laughed, but I got pink, for honestly, I hadn’t realized I was doing that. It only seemed natural and nice, and not anything about it made me conscious until that moment!) “You know,” Mr. Wake went on, “one of these old boys will see you, and wonder how the thing is done, and pop! some nice evening he’ll crawl over the wall, and hike down to Florence, and try to find a sweetheart. Then some jealous brother will see him come in late, and report, and there’ll be no end of a row. You want to _think of these things_!” I tried to free my hand, but Sam held it too tightly, because, I think, he saw it teased me.