I had since the date of their former visit quitted my house in Florence, and established myself in a villa and small _podere_ at Ricorboli, a commune outside the Florentine Porta San Niccolo.

And there I had the great pleasure of receiving them under my roof, assisted in doing so by my present wife.

Their visit was all too short a one--less than a week, I think.
But one knows a person with whom one has passed even that short time under the same roof far better than can ever be the result of a very much longer acquaintanceship during which one meets only in the ordinary intercourse of society.

And the really intimate knowledge of her which I was thus enabled to obtain has left with me the abiding conviction that she was intellectually by far the most extraordinarily gifted person it has ever been my good fortune to meet.

I do not insist much on the uniform and constant tender consideration for others, which was her habitual frame of mind, for I have known others of whom the same might have been said.