t, overwhelmed by the silence of the spot,
united to each other by an impulse of fear, crushed by their
insignificance in the midst of this annihilating vastness, even as two
Egyptian ants in the shadow of the Great Pyramid.

Aguirre felt the necessity of saying something, and his voice took on a
grave character, as if in those surroundings, impregnated with the
majesty of Nature, it was impossible to speak otherwise.

"I love you," he began, with the incongruity of one who passes without
transition from long meditation to the spoken word. "I love you, for you
are of my race and yet you are not; because you speak my language and
yet your blood is not my blood. You possess the grace and beauty of the
Spanish woman, yet there is something more in you,--something exotic,
that speaks to me of distant lands, of poetic things, of unknown
perfumes that I seem to smell whenever I am near you.... And you, Luna.
Why do you love me?"

"I love you," she replied, after a long silence, her voice solemn and
veiled like that of an emotional soprano, "I love you because you, too,
have something in your face that resembles those of my race, and yet you
are as distinct from them as is the servant from the master. I love
you... I don't know why. In me there dwells the soul of the ancient
Jewesses of the desert, who went to the well in the oasis with their
hair let down and their pitchers on their heads. Then came the Gentile
stranger, with his camels, begging water; she looked at him with her
solemn, deep eyes, and as she poured the water in between her white
hands she gave him her heart, her whole soul, and followed him like a
slave.... Your people killed and robbed mine; for centuries my
forefathers wept in strange lands the loss of their new Zion, their
beautiful land, their nest of consolation. I ought to hate you, but I
love you; I am yours and will follow you wherever you go." The blue
shadows of the promontory became deeper. It was almost night. The
sea-gulls, shrieking, retired to their hiding-places in the rocks. The
sea commenced to disappear beneath a thin mist. The lighthouse of Europe
shone like a diamond from afar in the heavens above the Strait, which
were still clear. A sweet somnolence seemed to arise from the dying day,
enveloping all Nature. The two human atoms, lost in this immensity, felt
themselves invaded by the universal tremor, oblivious to all that but a
short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot