And now a dog began to notice the moon:  now a child cried suddenly that had been dragged back from the street, where it had wandered at bedtime:  an old dog rose from where it had lain in the sun and feebly yet confidently scratched at a door:  a cat peered round a corner:  a man spoke:  Rodriguez knew there would be no answer now.

Rodriguez hit his horse, the tired animal went forward, and he and Morano rode slowly up the street.

Dona Serafina of the Valley of Dawnlight had left the heat of the room that looked on the fields, and into which the sun had all day been streaming, and had gone at sunset to sit in the balcony that looked along the street.  Often she would do this at sunset; but she rather dreamed as she sat there than watched the street, for all that it had to show she knew without glancing.  Evening after evening as soon as winter was over the neighbour would come from next door and stretch himself and yawn and sit on a chair by his doorway, and the neighbour from opposite would saunter across the way to him, and they would talk with eagerness of the sale of cattle, and sometimes, but more coldly, of the affairs of kings.  She knew, but cared not to know, just when the two old men would begin their talk.  She knew who owned every dog that stretched itself in the dust until chilly winds blew in the dusk and they rose up dissatisfied.  She knew the affairs of that street like an old, old lesson taught drearily, and her thoughts went far away to vales of an imagination where they met with many another maiden fancy, and they all danced there together through the long twilight in Spring.  And then her mother would come and warn her that the evening grew cold, and Serafina would turn from the mystery of evening into the house and the candle-light.  This was so evening after evening all through spring and summer for two long years of her youth.  And then, this evening, just as the two old neighbours began to discuss whether or not the subjugation of the entire world by Spain would be for its benefit, just as one of the dogs in the road was rising slowly to shake itself, neighbours and dogs all raised their heads to look, and there was Rodriguez riding down the street and Morano coming behind him.  When Serafina saw this she brought her eyes back from dreams, for she dreamed not so deeply but that the cloak and plume of Rodriguez found some place upon the boundaries of her day-dream.  When she saw the way he sat his horse and how he carried his head she let her eyes flash for a little moment along the street from her balcony.  And if some critical reader ask how she did it I answer, “My good sir, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know,” or “My dear lady, what a question to ask!” And where she learned to do it I cannot think, but nothing was easier.  And then she smiled to think that she had done the very thing that her mother had warned her there was danger in doing.

“Serafina,” her mother said in that moment at the large window, “the evening grows cold.  It might be dangerous to stay there longer.”  And Serafina entered the house, as she had done at the coming of dusk on many an evening.