"I shall not be likely to forget it."
"Well, then, I have an odd fancy, and it is this. I want you to promise me, after I have left this beautiful place and you, that you will write a description of this drive, as if to an unknown third person, with the details and necessary explanations. I will do the same. Then, if we meet again, you can read mine and I yours, if we like, and look back to this time. Will you promise?"
I considered a minute, and then said, "I think I can see that such a description will not be an easy thing to me; yet, if it is your wish, of course, Mr. Grey, I promise."
"We may meet after many years, you an old lady and I an old man; and these accounts will bring back to us this perfect day, and all that we have seen and felt."
I looked at him and smiled. "Mr. Grey, I have been invited to spend a year abroad with some friends, and my father says I may go if I choose. We may meet next winter, in Rome."
And in Rome we did meet, sure enough—that Rome to which "all roads lead." I began to take one of those roads soon after Mr. Grey's departure. I found it a road "so plain that a fool could not err therein," a "path of peace." And when we stood side by side in the Rome of the Seven Hills, he made up his mind to share the seventh sacrament with a "convert girl."
THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE "CARITA."