He Owed It To Them, He Said, To Tell Them What He Was Thinking About; They Would Then Know How Much They Had Done For His Pleasure That Evening And How He Appreciated It.

He was, he continued, one of a large family, very united, all living with their parents at home; and

In winter, which was cold in his part of Spain, their happiest time was in the evening when they would gather before a big fire of oak logs in their _solar_ and pass the time with books and conversation and a little music and singing. Naturally, since he had left his country years ago, the thought of that time and those evenings had occasionally been in his mind - a passing thought and memory. On this evening it had come in a different way, less like a memory than a revival of the past, so that as he sat there among us, he was a boy back in Spain once more, sitting by the fire with his brothers and sisters and parents. With that feeling in him he could not go on playing. And he thought it most strange that such an experience should have come to him for the first time in that place out on that great naked pampa, sparsely inhabited, where life was so rough, so primitive.

And while he talked we all listened - how eagerly! - drinking in his words, especially my mother, her eyes bright with the moisture rising in them; and she often afterwards recalled that evening guest, who was seen no more by us but had left an enduring image in our hearts.

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