She stared; then she recognized me. She smiled and blushed and clasped her two hands together. “I remember you now,” she said. “I remember that day.” But she stood there, neither coming out nor asking me to come in. She was embarrassed. I, too, felt a little awkward. I poked my stick into the path. “I kept looking out for you, year after year,” I said. “You mean in Europe?” murmured Miss Spencer. “In Europe, of course! Here, apparently, you are easy enough to find.” She leaned her hand against the unpainted doorpost, and her head fell a little to one side. She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and I thought I recognized the expression that one sees in women’s eyes when tears are rising. Suddenly she stepped out upon the cracked slab of stone before the threshold and closed the door behind her. Then she began to smile intently, and I saw that her teeth were as pretty as ever. But there had been tears too. “Have you been there ever since?” she asked, almost in a whisper. “Until three weeks ago. And you--you never came back?” Still looking at me with her fixed smile, she put her hand behind her and opened the door again. “I am not very polite,” she said. “Won’t you come in?” “I am afraid I incommode you.” “Oh, no!” she answered, smiling more than ever. And she pushed back the door, with a sign that I should enter. I went in, following her. She led the way to a small room on the left of the narrow hall, which I supposed to be her parlor, though it was at the back of the house, and we passed the closed door of another apartment which apparently enjoyed a view of the quince-trees. This one looked out upon a small woodshed and two clucking hens. But I thought it very pretty, until I saw that its elegance was of the most frugal kind; after which, presently, I thought it prettier still, for I had never seen faded chintz and old mezzotint engravings, framed in varnished autumn leaves, disposed in so graceful a fashion. Miss Spencer sat down on a very small portion of the sofa, with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. She looked ten years older, and it would have sounded very perverse now to speak of her as pretty. But I thought her so; or at least I thought her touching. She was peculiarly agitated. I tried to appear not to notice it; but suddenly, in the most inconsequent fashion,--it was an irresistible memory of our little friendship at Havre,--I said to her, “I do incommode you. You are distressed.” She raised her two hands to her face, and for a moment kept it buried in them. Then, taking them away,--“It’s because you remind me--” she said. “I remind you, you mean, of that miserable day at Havre?” She shook her head. “It was not miserable. It was delightful.” “I never was so shocked as when, on going back to your inn the next morning, I found you had set sail again.” She was silent a moment; and then she said, “Please let us not speak of that.” “Did you come straight back here?” I asked.