ttracted to each other by a budding affection. Where had he
been born? How had he spent his childhood? Had he loved many women?...

They passed beneath the arches of an old gate that dated back to the
time of the Spanish possession, and which still preserved the eagles and
the shields of the Austrian dynasty. In the old moat, now converted into
a garden, there was a group of tombs,--those of the English sailors who
had died at Trafalgar. They walked along an avenue in which the trees
alternated with heaps of old bombs and cone-shaped projectiles, reddened
by rust. Further on, the large cannon craned their necks toward the gray
cruisers of the military harbor and the extensive bay, over whose blue
plain, tremulous with gold, glided the white dots of some sailing
vessels.

On the broad esplanade of the Alameda, at the foot of the mountain
covered with pines and cottages, were groups of youths running and
kicking a restless ball around. At that hour, as at every hour of the
day, the huge ball of the English national game sped through the air
over paths, fields and garrison yards. A concert of shouts and kicks,
civil as well as military, rose into the air, to the glory of strong and
hygienic England.

They mounted a long stairway, afterwards seeking rest in a shady little
square, near the monument to a British hero, the defender of Gibraltar,
surrounded by mortars and cannon. Luna, gazing across the blue sea that
could be viewed through the colonnade of trees, at last spoke of her own
past.

Her childhood had been sad. Born in Rabat, where the Jew Benamor was
engaged in the exportation of Moroccan cloths, her life had flowed on
monotonously, without any emotion other than that of fear. The Europeans
of this African port were common folk, who had come thither to make
their fortune. The Moors hated the Jews. The rich Hebrew families had to
hold themselves apart, nourishing themselves socially upon their own
substance, ever on the defensive in a country that lacked laws. The
young Jewish maidens were given an excellent education, which they
acquired with the facility of their race in adopting all progress. They
astonished newcomers to Rabat with their hats and their clothes, similar
to those of Paris and London; they played the piano; they spoke various
languages, and yet, on certain nights of sleeplessness and terror, their
parents dressed them in foul tatters and disguised them, staining their
faces and their hands with