When flowers glimmered and Venus smiled and all things else were dim, they turned on one of those little paths hand in hand homeward.

Dona Mirana glanced once at her daughter’s eyes and said nothing.  Don Alderon renewed his talk with Rodriguez, giving reasons for his apprehension of the conquest of the world by the Moors, which he had thought of since last night; and Rodriguez agreed with all that Don Alderon said, but understood little, being full of dreams that seemed to dance on the further, side of the candlelight to a strange, new, unheard tune that his heart was aware of.  He gazed much at Serafina and said little.

He drank no wine that night with Don Alderon:  what need had he of wine?  On wonderful journeys that my pen cannot follow, for all the swiftness of the wing from which it came; on darting journeys outspeeding the lithe swallow or that great wanderer the white-fronted goose, his young thoughts raced by a myriad of golden evenings far down the future years.  And what of the days he saw?  Did he see them truly?  Enough that he saw them in vision.  Saw them as some lone shephered on lifted downs sees once go by with music a galleon out of the East, with windy sails, and masts ablaze with pennants, and heroes in strange dress singing new songs; and the galleon goes nameless by till the singing dies away.  What ship was it?  Whither bound?  Why there?  Enough that he has seen it.  Thus do we glimpse the glory of rare days as we swing round the sun; and youth is like some high headland from which to see.

On the next day he spoke with Dona Mirano.  There was little to say but to observe the courtesies appropriate to this occasion, for Dona Mirana and her daughter had spoken long together already; and of one thing he could say little, and indeed was dumb when asked of it, and that was the question of his home.  And then he said that he had a castle; and when Dona Mirana asked him where it was he said vaguely it was to the North.  He trusted the word of the King of Shadow Valley and so he spoke of his castle as a man speaks the truth.  And when she asked him of his castle again, whether on rock or river or in leafy lands, he began to describe how its ten towers stood, being builded of a rock that was slightly pink, and how they glowed across a hundred fields, especially at evening; and suddenly he ceased, perceiving all in a moment he was speaking unwittingly in the words of Don Alvidar and describing to Dona Mirana that rose-pink castle on Ebro.  And Dona Mirana knew then that there was some mystery about Rodriguez’ home.

She spoke kindly to Rodriguez, yet she neither gave her consent nor yet withheld it, and he knew there was no immediate hope in her words.  Graceful as were his bows as he withdrew, he left with scarcely another word to say.  All day his castle hung over him like a cloud, not nebulous and evanescent only, but brooding darkly, boding storms, such as the orange blossoms dread.