I could remember the exact words we had each said; and I had spoken, and she had replied, in English.

Plainly, then, the whole affair was an illusion: catacombs, and stairs, and charitable lady, all were equally the stuff of dreams.
I had just come to this determination, when there blew a flaw of wind through the autumnal gardens; the dead leaves showered down, and a flight of sparrows, thick as a snowfall, wheeled above my head with sudden pipings.

This agreeable bustle was the affair of a moment, but it startled me from the abstraction into which I had fallen like a summons.
I sat briskly up, and as I did so, my eyes rested on the figure of a lady in a brown jacket and carrying a paint-box.

By her side walked a fellow some years older than myself, with an easel under his arm; and alike by their course and cargo I might judge they were bound for the gallery, where the lady was, doubtless, engaged upon some copying.
You can imagine my surprise when I recognized in her the heroine of my adventure.

To put the matter beyond question, our eyes met, and she, seeing herself remembered and recalling the trim in which I had last beheld her, looked swiftly on the ground with just a shadow of confusion.
I could not tell you to-day if she were plain or pretty; but she had behaved with so much good sense, and I had cut so poor a figure in her presence, that I became instantly fired with the desire to display myself in a more favorable light.