and goal of all the earth. And his
love for Serafina seemed to him not only to be an event in his life but
to have some part in veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the
blessing of most distant days: grey beards seemed to look out of graves
in forgotten places to wag approval: hands seemed to beckon to him out
of far-future times, where faces were smiling quietly: and, dreaming on
further still, this vast approval that gave benediction to his heart's
youthful fancy seemed to widen and widen like the gold of a summer's
evening or, the humming of bees in summer in endless rows of limes,
until it became a part of the story of man. Spring days of his earliest
memory seemed to have their part in it, as well as wonderful evenings
of days that were yet to be, till his love for Serafina was one with
the fate of earth; and, wandering far on their courses, he knew that
the stars blessed it. But Serafina went up to the man on the couch with
no look for Rodriguez.

With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken hidalgo. He
raised himself a little on one elbow. "It is nothing," he said,
"Serafina."

Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with open
and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead, she spoke in a low
voice to him; she lavished upon him sympathy for which Rodriguez would
have offered his head to swords; and all, thought Rodriguez for three
blows from a knave's frying-pan: and his anger against Morano flared up
again fiercely. Then there came another thought to him out of the
shadows, where Serafina was standing all white, a figure of solace. Who
was this man who so mysteriously blended with the other unknown things
that haunted the gloom of that chamber? Why had he fought him at night?
What was he to Serafina? Thoughts crowded up to him from the interior
of the darkness, sombre and foreboding as the shadows that nursed them.
He stood there never daring to speak to Serafina; looking for
permission to speak, such as a glance might give. And no glance came.

And now, as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his eyes.
Serafina stood beside him anxious and silent, gleaming in that dim
place. The servant at the far end of the chamber still held his one
candle high, as though some light of earth were needed against the
fantastic moon, which if unopposed would give everything over to magic.
Rodriguez stood there, scarcely breathing. All was silent. And then
through the door