erings, and when he had been told of this or that beauty who was
in love with his proud, bearing and dashing courage. Women! What were
women? He had only cared for the bulls, for the clamor of the people,
and the wild excitement of the arena. All he had wished for was to learn
the best stroke, the finest leap. But this girl, who had never opened
her scornful little mouth to deign him a word--who had never once
allowed him to look in her eyes--somehow this one drove him half mad.
He could think of nothing else; he forgot even the bulls; he spent all
the day and sometimes all the night in devising plans to entrap her into
speaking, to force her to look at him. How obstinate she was! How she
could elude him, as if by some magic!

What had he not done that he might be near her? He had followed her
everywhere. Jose did not know that she scarcely ever went out without
his following and speaking to her. He used to spring up by her side as
if he had risen out of the earth, but after the first two or three times
he never succeeded in making her start or show any feeling whatever.

But that first time, and even the second, she had started. The first
time she had gone to the old well for water, and as she stood resting
in the shade a moment he appeared With a bouquet of beautiful strange
flowers in his hand.

"God be with you!" he said, and laid the flowers down a moment and drew
the water for her.

She watched him draw it, smiling just a little.

"It will be a fine day for the bull-fight," he said, when her jar was
filled.

She put her hand up and shaded her working eyes as she looked at the
blue sky, but she said nothing.

"Do you go to-day to the Plaza de Toros?" he asked. "You shall have good
places--the best. They are good bulls to-day, black Andalusians, fierce
and hard to manage. There will be fine sport. You will go?"

[Illustration: She leaned against the side of the well 095]

She leaned against the side of the well and looked down into the water,
where she could see her face reflected in the cool, dark depths. The
next moment Sebastiano's was reflected also. He held the flowers in his
hand.

"These!" he said. "It was one of the gardeners of the king who gave them
to me. They are such as the queen sometimes wears. I brought them that
you might wear them at the bull-fight."

She saw their beauty reflected in the water. She would not look at them
directly. They were very beautiful. She had never seen such flow