?

It was in a fever of uncertainty that I must spend the next
four-and-twenty hours.

XXXVII

DREAMS AND AN AWAKENING

That night, in my villa above "the road of the great Moor-killing," the
nightingales were the only _serenos_. Their song was the song of the
stars; and the song of the stars was the song of the nightingales. At
dawn, from my window, I was taken into the private life of my neighbour
birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and
from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came
up--church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their
masters sang _coplas_ with a lilting Moorish wail.

Once again I went down to look at Carmona's door, to find it still kept by
guardia civile; and most of the day I spent in the Alhambra, seeing rooms
and courts I had missed yesterday, looking down often into the _patio_ of
the palace in the Albaicin.

I dined in the hotel garden, and before nine I was at the appointed spot
in the road outside the high wall of my Carmen. The moments passed as I
walked up and down, my cigarette a spot of fire in the growing moonlight;
still the gypsy-faced girl did not come.

Twenty minutes late, said my watch, and as I stared at it, a man stopped
in front of me.

"Is the noble senor expecting someone?" he asked.

I put my watch away and looked at him. The moon, obscured though it was by
clouds, showed a tall figure, with strong shoulders, and a face which
seemed in the night as dark as a Moor's. The man had lifted his hat from
his thick black hair, and I said to myself that he was a model for an
artist who wished to paint a gypsy.

Finding that I did not answer on the instant, he went on--

"The senor must forgive me if I have made a mistake; but my sister, who
had an errand to do for a gentleman, has sent me in her place."

"In that case you have made no mistake," I said. "You have a message for
me from your sister?"

"And from a lady. The message is, that if the senor will come to my house
in an hour, he will find what he seeks."

My blood quickened.

"What do I seek?"

"A lady who loves you, and has sent you this through my sister."

The man produced a tiny white paper packet which I took, but would not
open in his presence.

"Do you mean that the lady will, meet me at your house--to-night?" I asked.

"She hopes it, for there is no other place or way. My sister w