he says, "where Don Rodriguez is going. My master did
not tell me."

Did he notice nothing as they rode by that balcony?

"Nothing," Morano answers, "except my master riding."

We may let Morano's shade drift hence again, for we shall discover
nothing: nor is this an age to which to call back spirits.

Rodriguez strolled slowly on the deep dust of that street as though
wondering all the while where he should go; and soon he and his
mandolin were below that very balcony whereon he had seen the white
neck of Serafina gleam with the last of the daylight. And now the
spells of the moon charmed Earth with their full power.

The balcony was empty. How should it have been otherwise? And yet
Rodriguez grieved. For between the vision that had drawn his footsteps
and that bare balcony below shuttered windows was the difference
between a haven, sought over leagues of sea, and sheer, uncharted
cliff. It brought a wistfulness into the music he played, and a
melancholy that was all new to Rodriguez, yet often and often before
had that mandolin sent up through evening against unheeding Space that
cry that man cannot utter; for the spirit of man needs a mandolin as a
comrade to face the verdict of the chilly stars as he needs a bulldog
for more mundane things.

Soon out of the depth of that stout old mandolin, in which so many
human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders spin
misty grey webs, till it was all haunted with music, soon the old cry
went up to the stars again, a thread of supplication spun of the matter
which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it knew not what. And,
but that Fate is deaf, all that man asks in music had been granted then.

What sorrows had Rodriguez known in his life that he made so sad a
melody? I know not. It was the mandolin. When the mandolin was made it
knew at once all the sorrows of man, and all the old unnamed longings
that none defines. It knew them as the dog knows the alliance that its
forefathers made with man. A mandolin weeps the tears that its master
cannot shed, or utters the prayers that are deeper than its master's
lips can draw, as a dog will fight for his master with teeth that are
longer than man's. And if the moonlight streamed on untroubled, and
though Fate was deaf, yet beauty of those fresh strains going starward
from under his fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and
gilded his dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory,
unti