And so he loitered, waiting for the slow sun to set:  and when at last a tint on the walls of Lowlight came with the magic of Earth’s most faery hour he rode in slowly not perhaps wholly unwitting, for all his anxious thoughts of Serafina, that a little air of romance from the Spring and the evening followed this lonely rider.

From some way off he saw that balcony that had drawn him back from the other side of the far Pyrenees.  Sometimes he knew that it drew him and mostly he knew it not; yet always that curved balcony brought him nearer, ever since he turned from the field of the false Don Alvidar:  the balcony held him with invisible threads, such as those with which Earth draws in the birds at evening.  And there was Serafina in her balcony.

When Rodriguez saw Serafina sitting there in the twilight, just as he had often dreamed, he looked no more but lowered his head to the withered rose that he carried now in his hand, the rose that he had found by that very balcony under another moon.  And, gazing still at the rose, he rode on under the balcony, and passed it, until his hoof-beats were heard no more in Lowlight and he and his horse were one dim shape between the night and the twilight.  And still he held on.

He knew not yet, but only guessed, who had thrown that rose from the balcony on the night when he slept on the dust:  he knew not who it was that he fought on the same night, and dared not guess what that unknown hidalgo might be to Serafina.  He had no claim to more from that house, which once gave him so cold a welcome, than thus to ride by it in silence.  And he knew as he rode that the cloak and the plume that he wore scarce seemed the same as those that had floated by when more than a month ago he had ridden past that balcony; and the withered rose that he carried added one more note of autumn.  And yet he hoped.

And so he rode into twilight and was hid from the sight of the village, a worn, pathetic figure, trusting vaguely to vague powers of good fortune that govern all men, but that favour youth.

And, sure enough, it was not yet wholly moonlight when cantering hooves came down the road behind him.  It was once more that young hidalgo.  And as soon as he drew rein beside Rodriguez both reached out merry hands as though their former meeting had been some errand of joy.  And as Rodriguez looked him in the eyes, while the two men leaned over clasping hands, in light still clear though faded, he could not doubt Serafina was his sister.

“Senor,” said his old enemy, “will you tarry with us, in our house a few days, if your journey is not urgent?”