idea; but, what does love exist for, if not to make people do the
foolish things that sweeten life?... Carry me off in your boat! The bark
that bore you there will transport the two of us to your enchanted
island; we will spend the whole night in the open air."

And Rafael, who was flattered by the idea of taking his love publicly
down the river, through the slumbering countryside, unfastened his boat
at midnight under the bridge and rowed it to a canebrake near Leonora's
orchard.

An hour later they emerged through the opening in the hedge, arm in arm,
laughing at the mischievous escapade, disturbing the majestic silence of
the landscape with noisy, insolent kisses.

They got into the boat, and with a favoring current, began to descend
the Jucar, lulled by the murmur of the river as it glided between the
high mudbanks covered with reeds that bent low over the water and
formed mysterious hiding places.

Leonora clapped her hands with delight. She threw over her neck the silk
shawl with which she had covered her head. She unbuttoned her light
traveling coat, and inhaled with deep enjoyment the moist, somewhat
muggy breeze that was curling along the surface of the river. Her hand
trembled as it dipped into the water from time to time.

How beautiful it was! All by themselves, and wandering about, as if the
world did not exist; as if all Nature belonged to them, to them alone!
Here they were, slipping past clusters of slumbering houses, leaving the
city far behind. And nobody had suspected that passion, which in its
enthusiasm had broken its chains and left its mysterious lair to have
the heavens and the fields for sympathetic witnesses. Leonora would have
wished that the night should never end; that the waning moon, which
seemed to have been slashed by a sword, should stop eternally in the sky
to wrap them forever in its feeble, dying light; that the river should
be endless, and the boat float on and on until, overwhelmed by so much
love, they should breathe the last gasp of life away in a kiss as
tenuous as a sigh.

"If you could only know how grateful I am to you for this excursion,
Rafael!... I'm happy, so happy. Never have I had such a night as this.
But where is the island? Have we gone astray, as you did the night of
the flood?"

No! At last they reached the place. There Rafael had spent many an
afternoon hidden in the bushes, cut off by the encircling waters,
dreaming that he was an adventurer on the virgi