It would be his farewell!  The whim had occurred to him as he left the city and saw the first orange-trees laden with the blossoms whose perfume had for many months been holding the songstress there in patient expectation.  Leonora would never know he had been near her in the silent orchard bathed in moonlight, taking leave of her with the unspoken anguish of an eternal farewell, as to a dream vanishing on the horizon of life!

The gate with the green wooden bars came into view among the trees—­the gate that had been slammed behind him in insulting dismissal.  Among the thorns of the hedge he looked for an opening he had discovered in the days when he used to hover about the house.  He went through, and his feet sank into the fine, sandy soil of the orange-groves.  Above the tops of the trees, the house itself could be seen, white in the moonlight.  The rain-troughs of the roof and the balustrades of the balconies shone like silver.  The windows were all closed.  Everything was asleep.

He was about to step forward, when a dark form shot out from between two orange-trees and stopped near him with a muffled growl.  It was the house dog, an ugly, ill-tempered animal trained to bite before it barked.

Rafael recoiled instinctively from the warm breath of that panting, furious muzzle which was reaching for his leg; but the dog, after a second’s hesitation, began to wag its tail with pleasure; and was content merely to sniff at the boy’s trousers so as to make absolutely sure of an old friend’s identity.  Rafael patted him on the head, as he had done so many times, distractedly, in conversations with Leonora on the bench in the plazoleta.  A good omen this encounter seemed!  And he walked on, while the dog resumed his watch in the darkness.

Timidly he made his way forward in the shelter of a large patch of shadow cast by the orange-trees, dragging himself along, almost, like a thief afraid of an ambuscade.

He reached the walk leading to the plazoleta and was surprised to find the gate half open.  Suddenly he heard a suppressed cry near by.

He turned around, and there on the tile bench, wrapped in the shadow of the palm-trees and the rose-bushes, he saw a white form—­a woman.  As she rose from her seat the moonlight fell squarely on her features.

“Leonora!”

The youth would have gladly sunk into the earth.  “Rafael!  You here?...”

And the two stood there in silence, face to face.  He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, ashamed.  She looked at him with a certain indecision.

“You’ve given me a scare that I’ll never forgive you for,” she said at last.  “What are you doing here?...”

Rafael was at a loss for a reply.  He stammered with an embarrassment that quite impressed Leonora; but despite his agitation, he noticed a strange glitter in the girl’s eyes, and a mysterious veiling of her voice that seemed to transfigure her.