eful under the
moon.

For an instant the soft light seemed darkness, and I lost the white
figure. When it sprang to my eyes again in a sharp emerald flash, while
all the hidden fountains in the garden walks spouted jewels, others were
grouped round it; only the gold crown of rippling hair shone out clear as
a star for me among other women's dark coils and braids.

Old ebony chairs with crimson velvet cushions and the Carmona arms in
heavy gilding, had been sent to the Alcazar from the Duke's house, for the
entertainment. The party sat down, and the dancing began, to the
_flamenco_ music of guitars and the clacking of castanets; the _fandango_,
the _bolero_, the _malaguena_, the _chaquera vella_; all the classical
dances of old Spain, and each one a variant on the theme of love, the
woman coy, coquettishly retreating; the man persuading or demanding, the
woman yielding in passionate abandonment at last.

In the midst of a _sevillana_ I came out from the shadows of the kiosk and
walked without a sound of rattling pebble or cracking twig, along a path
which the moon had not yet found.

The high backs of the ebony chairs were turned to me. I could not even see
the heads of the people who sat in them; but I had watched them take their
places, and I knew that Monica's chair was the outside one on the end, at
the right.

Everyone was absorbed in watching the dance. As it approached its
tempestuous climax of joy and love, I moved into the deep shadow of a
magnolia tree, close to Monica--so close that, reaching out from behind the
round trunk which screened me, I touched her hand.

With a start, she glanced up, expecting perhaps to find that the breeze
had blown a rose-branch across her fingers. Instead, she saw my face; for
I had taken off the wide-brimmed grey sombrero and bared my head to her.

For a second she looked straight into my eyes, as if she doubted that she
saw aright. Then, an unbelievable thing happened. Her eyes grew cold as
glass. Her lips tightened into a line which I had not dreamed their soft
curves could take. Her youth and beauty froze under my gaze. With a
haughty lifting of her brows, and an indescribable movement of her
shoulder which could mean nothing but scornful indifference, she turned
away as if impatient at having lost a gesture of the dancers.

Astounded, I stepped back; and so vast was the chasm of my amazement that
I floundered in it bewildered, unable even to suffer.

Then came a pan