"Well," I said, "you have not gone yet, and nevertheless you are not
crazy."

She looked at me a moment, and said, "I am not so sure. I don't think of
anything else. I am always thinking of it. It prevents me from thinking
of things that are nearer home, things that I ought to attend to. That
is a kind of craziness."

"The cure for it is to go," I said.

"I have a faith that I shall go. I have a cousin in Europe!" she
announced.

We turned over some more photographs, and I asked her if she had always
lived at Grimwinter.

"Oh, no, sir," said Miss Spencer. "I have spent twenty-three months in
Boston."

I answered, jocosely, that in that case foreign lands would probably
prove a disappointment to her; but I quite failed to alarm her.

"I know more about them than you might think," she said, with her shy,
neat little smile. "I mean by reading; I have read a great deal I have
not only read Byron; I have read histories and guidebooks. I know I
shall like it."

"I understand your case," I rejoined. "You have the native American
passion,--the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is
primordial,--antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows
us something we have dreamt of."

"I think that is very true," said Caroline Spencer. "I have dreamt of
everything; I shall know it all!"

"I am afraid you have wasted a great deal of time."

"Oh, yes, that has been my great wickedness."

The people about us had begun to scatter; they were taking their leave.
She got up and put out her hand to me, timidly, but with a peculiar
brightness in her eyes.

"I am going back there," I said, as I shook hands with her. "I shall
look out for you."

"I will tell you," she answered, "if I am disappointed."

And she went away, looking delicately agitated, and moving her little
straw fan.

II.

A few months after this I returned to Europe, and some three years
elapsed. I had been living in Paris, and, toward the end of October, I
went from that city to Havre, to meet my sister and her husband, who
had written me that they were about to arrive there. On reaching Havre
I found that the steamer was already in; I was nearly two hours late.
I repaired directly to the hotel, where my relatives were already
established. My sister had gone to bed, exhausted and disabled by her
voyage; she was a sadly incompetent sailor, and her sufferings on this
occasion had been extreme. She wished, for the moment, for und