slowly and so meaninglessly, as stupid people do when they speak a
foreign tongue, that the words seemed to be uttered by some lonely ghost
that had found a lodging in her broad mouth. Then the men fell back to
let him go out through the folding-doors, and he went out into the
Moorish arches of the entrance-hall, where Indian flunkeys in purple
livery gave him his coat and hat, and he set his back to this queer mass
of cupolas and towers, that radiated from its uncurtained windows rays
of light which were pollutions of the moonlight. He thought of that
blotched face, that gross, full body.... It was a night of strong
moonlight. He was walking along a dazzling white causeway edged, where
the wall cast its shadow, with a ribbon of blackness. Palms stood up
glittering, touched by the moon to something madder than their daylight
fantasy of form. The aluminium-painted railings in front of de Rojas'
villa gleamed like the spears of heroes. He stared between them at the
red façade; if she was a coward she would still be somewhere in there.
The thought struck him with terror. If she were not waiting for him the
moonlight would shatter and turn to darkness, the violence of his
heart-beat turn to stillness.

Now he had come to the Villa Miraflores. This was his house. Yet he
entered the gate like a thief, and crept along the shadow of the wall
that enclosed his own gardens. The magnolias stood blazing white on the
lawns, the stiff scarlet poinsettias twitched resentfully under the
poising fireflies' weight, and from the dark geraniums scent rose like a
smoke. He would have liked to go to her with an armful of flowers, but
he did not dare to go out into the light. He passed the door that led
from his to de Rojas' garden, which had been made when a father and son
had been tenants of the two houses, and which had never been blocked up
because de Rojas and he were such good neighbours. If it had not been
unlocked to-night, if the marble summerhouse were empty.... He stood in