the presence
of the city on the other side of the mountain; the existence of
humanity, of which they were infinitesimal parts.... Completely alone,
penetrating each other through their pupils! Thus, thus forever! There
was a crackling sound in the dark, like dry branches creaking before
they break.

All at once a red flash sped through the air,--something straight and
rapid as the flight of a fiery bird. Then the mountain trembled and the
sea echoed under a dry thunder. The sunset gun!... A timely boom.

The two shuddered as though just awakening from a dream. Luna, as if in
flight, ran down the path in search of the main road, without listening
to Aguirre.... She was going to get home late; she would never visit
that spot again. It was dangerous.

IV

THE consul wandered through Royal Street, his pipe out, his glance sad
and his cane hanging from his arm. He was depressed. When, during his
walking back and forth he stopped instinctively before Khiamull's shop,
he had to pass on. Khiamull was not there. Behind the counter were only
two clerks, as greenish in complexion as their employer. His poor friend
was in the hospital, in the hope that a few days of rest away from the
damp gloom of the shop would be sufficient to relieve him of the cough
that seemed to unhinge his body and make him throw up blood. He came
from the land of the sun and needed its divine caress.

Aguirre might have stopped at the Aboabs' establishment, but he was
somewhat afraid. The old man whimpered with emotion, as usual, when he
spoke to the consul, but in his kindly, patriarchal gestures there was
something new that seemed to repel the Spaniard. Zabulon received him
with a grunt and would continue counting money.

For four days Aguirre had not seen Luna. The hours that he spent at his
window, vainly watching the house of the Aboabs! Nobody on the roof;
nobody behind the blinds, as if the house were unoccupied. Several times
he encountered on the street the wife and daughters of Zabulon, but they
passed him by pretending not to see him, solemn and haughty in their
imposing obesity.

Luna was no more to be seen than as if she had left Gibraltar. One
morning he thought he recognized her delicate hand opening the blinds;
he imagined that he could distinguish, through the green strips of
wood, the ebony crown of her hair, and her luminous eyes raised toward
him. But it was a fleeting apparition that lasted only a second. When he
trie