just to see a handful of puny orange-trees in bloom; now I want to take
one great, deep, plunge into the deluge of orange blossoms that
inundates these fields every year. It's the one thing that keeps me in
Alcira.... I'm sure. So if you come back about that season, you will
find me; and we will meet for one last time; for that will be the limit
of my endurance. I shall simply have to fly away, however hard poor
auntie takes it.... For the present, however, I am quite comfortable.
You see I was so tired! I find this solitude a welcome refuge after a
stormy voyage. Only something very important indeed could persuade me to
leave it at once."

But they saw each other on many another afternoon in the garden, there.
It was saturated now with the fragrance of ripe oranges. The vast valley
lay blue beneath the winter sun. Oranges, oranges, everywhere, reaching
out, it seemed, through the foliage, to the industrious hands that were
plucking them from the branches. Carts were creaking all along the
roads, trundling heaps of golden fruit over the ruts. The large shipping
houses rang again with the voices of girls singing at their work as they
selected and wrapped the oranges in paper. Hammers were pounding at the
wooden crates, and off toward France and England in great golden waves
those daughters of the South rolled--capsules of golden skin, filled
with sweet juice--the quintessence of Spanish sunshine.

Leonora, standing on tiptoe under an old tree, with her back toward
Rafael, was looking for a particularly choice orange among the dense
branches. As she swayed this way and that, the proud, graceful curves of
her vigorous slenderness became more beautiful than ever.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," the young man said, dispiritedly.

Leonora turned around. She had found her orange and was peeling it with
her long pink nails.

"Tomorrow?" she said, smiling. "Everything comes if you wait long
enough!... The best of success to you, senor deputy."

And bringing the fragrant fruit to her lips, she sank her white,
glistening teeth into the golden pulp, closing her eyes rapturously, to
sense the full warm sweetness of the juice.

Rafael stood there pale and trembling, as if something desperate were
in his mind.

"Leonora! Leonora!... Surely you are not going to send me away like
this?"

And then suddenly, carried away by a passion so long restrained, so long
crushed under timidity and fear, he ran up to her, seized her hands and