ely, walked a woman,
superbly, as Spanish women will, with a self-sufficiency almost
arrogantly strong, robed in white, hooded with a white veil. The
mantilla came streaming from the comb, swathed her pale cheeks and
enhanced her lustrous eyes; but from top to toe she was (whatever else;
she may have been, and it was not difficult to guess) in white.

Manvers watched them pass and repass; at a distance they looked like
moths, but close at hand showed the carriage and intolerance of queens.
They looked at him fairly as they passed, unashamed and unconcerned.
Their eyes asked nothing from him, their lips wooed him not. There was
none of the invitation such women extend elsewhere; far otherwise, it
was the men who craved, the women who dispensed. When they listened it
was as to a petitioner on his knees, when they gave it was like an
alms. Imperious, free-moving, high-headed creatures, they interested
him deeply.

It was true, as Gil Perez was quick to see, that at his first
bull-fight Manvers had been unmoved by the actors, but stirred to the
deeps by the spectators; if he had cared to see another it would have
been to explore the secrets of this wonderful people, who could become
animals without ceasing to be men and women. But why jostle on a
bench, why endure the dust and glare of a _corrida_ when you can see
what Madrid can show you: the women by the Manzanares, or the nightly
dramas of the streets?

Love in Spain, he began to learn, is a terrible thing; a grim tussle of
wills, a matter of life and death, of meat and drink. He saw lovers,
still as death, with upturned faces, tense and white, eating the iron
of guarded balconies. Hour by hour they would stand there, waiting,
watching, hoping on. No one interfered, no one remarked them. He
heard a woman wail for her lover--wail and rock herself about, careless
of who saw or heard her, and indeed neither seen nor heard. Once he
saw a couple close together, vehement speech between them. A lovers'
quarrel, terrible affair! The words seemed to scald. The man had had
his say, and now it was her turn. He listened to her, touched but not
persuaded--had his reasons, no doubt. But she! Manvers had not
believed the heart of a girl could hold such a gamut of emotions. She
was young, slim, very pale; her face was as white as her robe. But her
eyes were like burning lakes; and her voice, hoarse though she had made
herself, had a cry in it as sharp as a violin's