the distant waters of the Atlantic. She waved her short arms at
me over the railing, then plunged her dark fingers in the shock
of iron-gray hair gathered on the top of her head. She turned away
abruptly, a yellow head-kerchief dodged in her way, a slap resounded, a
cry of pain, and a negro girl bolted into the court, nursing her cheek
in the palms of her hands. Doors slammed; other negro girls ran out of
the veranda dismayed, and took cover in various directions.

I swayed to and fro in the saddle, but faithful to the plan of our
escape, I tried to make clear my desire that these peons should be sworn
to secrecy immediately. Meantime, somebody was trying to disengage my
feet from the stirrups.

"Certainly. It is as your worship wishes."

The careworn man at the head of my horse was utterly in the dark.

"Attention!" he shouted. "Catch hold, _hombres_. Carry the _caballero_."

What _caballero?_ A rosy flush tinged a boundless expanse above my face,
and then came a sudden contraction of space and dusk. There were big
earthen' ware jars ranged in a row on the floor, and the two _vaqueros_
stood bareheaded, stretching their arms over me towards a black crucifix
on a wall, taking their oaths, while I rested on my back. A white beard
hovered about my face, a voice said, "It is done," then called anxiously
twice, "Senor! Senor!" and when I had escaped from the dream of a
cavern, I found myself with my head pillowed on a fat woman's breast,
and drinking chicken broth out of a basin held to my lips. Her large
cheeks quivered, she had black twinkling eyes and slight moustaches at
the corners of her lips. But where was her white beard? And why did she
talk of an angel, as if she were Manuel?

"Seraphina!" I cried, but Castro's cloak swooped on my head like a sable
wing. It was death. I struggled. Then I died. It was delicious to die.
I followed the floating shape of my love beyond the worlds of the
universe. We soared together above pain, strife, cruelty, and pity.
We had left death behind us and everything of life but our love,
which threw a radiant halo around two flames which were ourselves--and
immortality inclosed us in a great and soothing darkness.

Nothing stirred in it. We drifted no longer. We hung in it quite
still--and the empty husk of my body watched our two flames side by
side, mingling their light in an infinite loneliness. There were two
candles burning low on a little black table near my head. Enrico, wit