limmered and Venus smiled and all things else were dim,
they turned on one of those little paths hand in hand homeward.

Dona Mirana glanced once at her daughter's eyes and said nothing. Don
Alderon renewed his talk with Rodriguez, giving reasons for his
apprehension of the conquest of the world by the Moors, which he had
thought of since last night; and Rodriguez agreed with all that Don
Alderon said, but understood little, being full of dreams that seemed
to dance on the further, side of the candlelight to a strange, new,
unheard tune that his heart was aware of. He gazed much at Serafina and
said little.

He drank no wine that night with Don Alderon: what need had he of wine?
On wonderful journeys that my pen cannot follow, for all the swiftness
of the wing from which it came; on darting journeys outspeeding the
lithe swallow or that great wanderer the white-fronted goose, his young
thoughts raced by a myriad of golden evenings far down the future
years. And what of the days he saw? Did he see them truly? Enough that
he saw them in vision. Saw them as some lone shepherd on lifted downs
sees once go by with music a galleon out of the East, with windy sails,
and masts ablaze with pennants, and heroes in strange dress singing new
songs; and the galleon goes nameless by till the singing dies away.
What ship was it? Whither bound? Why there? Enough that he has seen it.
Thus do we glimpse the glory of rare days as we swing round the sun;
and youth is like some high headland from which to see.

On the next day he spoke with Dona Mirano. There was little to say but
to observe the courtesies appropriate to this occasion, for Dona Mirana
and her daughter had spoken long together already; and of one thing he
could say little, and indeed was dumb when asked of it, and that was
the question of his home. And then he said that he had a castle; and
when Dona Mirana asked him where it was he said vaguely it was to the
North. He trusted the word of the King of Shadow Valley and so he spoke
of his castle as a man speaks the truth. And when she asked him of his
castle again, whether on rock or river or in leafy lands, he began to
describe how its ten towers stood, being builded of a rock that was
slightly pink, and how they glowed across a hundred fields, especially
at evening; and suddenly he ceased, perceiving all in a moment he was
speaking unwittingly in the words of Don Alvidar and describing to Dona
Mirana that rose-pink castle