ritated Telemachus who
tore his arm away suddenly and made off with long strides up a dark
street.

* * * * *

A half-waned moon shone through the perforations in a round terra-cotta
chimney into the street's angular greenish shadow. From somewhere came
the seethe of water over a dam. Telemachus was leaning against a damp
wall, tired and exultant, looking vaguely at the oval of a woman's face
half surmised behind the bars of an upper window, when he heard a
clatter of unsteady feet on the cobbles and Lyaeus appeared, reeling a
little, his lips moist, his eyebrows raised in an expression of drunken
jollity.

"Lyaeus, I am very happy," cried Telemachus stepping forward to meet
his friend. "Walking about here in these empty zigzag streets I have
suddenly felt familiar with it all, as if it were a part of me, as if I
had soaked up some essence out of it."

"Silly that about essences, gestures, Tel, silly.... Awake all you
need." Lyaeus stood on a little worn stone that kept wheels off the
corner of the house where the street turned and waved his arms. "Awake!
_Dormitant animorum excubitor._... That's not right. Latin's no good.
Means a fellow who says: 'wake up, you son of a gun.'"

"Oh, you're drunk. It's much more important than that. It's like
learning to swim. For a long time you flounder about, it's unpleasant
and gets up your nose and you choke. Then all at once you are swimming
like a duck. That's how I feel about all this.... The challenge was
that woman in Madrid, dancing, dancing...."

"Tel, there are things too good to talk about.... Look, I'm like St.
Simeon Stylites." Lyaeus lifted one leg, then the other, waving his
arms like a tight-rope walker.

"When I left you I walked out over the other bridge, the bridge of St.
Martin and climbed...."

"Shut up, I think I hear a girl giggling up in the window there."

Lyaeus stood up very straight on his column and threw a kiss up into
the darkness. The giggling turned to a shrill laughter; a head craned
out from a window opposite. Lyaeus beckoned with both hands.

"Never mind about them.... Look out, somebody threw something.... Oh,
it's an orange.... I want to tell you how I felt the gesture. I had
climbed up on one of the hills of the Cigarrales and was looking at the
silhouette of the town so black against the stormy marbled sky. The
moon hadn't risen yet.... Let's move away from here."

"_Ven, flor de mi corazon