mpelling obligations.

Monica, warned beforehand perhaps, when she was forced to come, put up her
fan whenever a bull rushed towards a horse, and would no doubt have kept
it there had not her mother spoken to her more than once, peremptorily. As
for Pilar, though she did not lift her fan, she seemed to see nothing, for
she sat with her head bowed, only starting and looking up when the horn
sounded for a new bull.

At last there was no more question as to whether the King and Queen would
stay to see Vivillo play his part. The fourth bull had been dragged away
dead by the team of tasselled mules, and the piercing blast, which had
grown to sound tragic in my ears, summoned Vivillo, all unknowing, to his
fate. And the royalties kept their seats, though the afternoon waned, and
shadow--like the creeping shadow of death--darkened two-thirds of the arena.

So keen was my sympathy with Pilar that I felt my throat contract and my
mouth go dry. So must it be with her at this moment which called her brave
favourite to his death; so, like mine, only faster and more thickly, must
her heart be beating.

Could she, after all, bear the ordeal? Would she not turn and hurry out
before the first picador drew the blood she had tried so hard to save? But
no; she sat still, her eyes large, her face blanched, and one hand twisted
in the folds of her lace mantilla as it rose and fell on her breast.

Before the dead was well out of the ring, and his red track sanded, the
door of the _toril_ was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a
coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for
this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the
pick of the _corrida_ should be fifth on the list. It was also a
compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo
would die.

The _bunolero_ sprang back as he opened the door, retiring more hastily
than was his wont into the space between the barriers out of the bull's
way. It was as if he, too, expected the new-comer to be something beyond
the ordinary in ferocity or cunning; for Carmona's bulls, like those of
the Muira breed, are famed for their terrible habit of ignoring the cloak
and charging at the body of the man who holds it.

Some bulls had rushed into the arena and blindly attacked the first object
which came within their dazed vision; but my heart had time to beat twice
before that noble form, which I had last seen in peaceful