e silent and infinitely light;
one hears only the frou-frou of gowns, and ever the snap of fingers
imitating the noise of castanets. With a Spanish grace, the girls, whose
wide sleeves expand like wings, swing their tightened waists above their
vigorous and supple hips--

Facing one another, Ramuntcho and Gracieuse said nothing at first,
captivated by the childish joy of moving quickly in cadence, to the
sound of music. It is very chaste, that manner of dancing without the
slightest touch of bodies.

But there were also, in the course of the evening, waltzes and
quadrilles, and even walks arm-in-arm during which the lovers could
touch each other and talk.

"Then, my Ramuntcho," said Gracieuse, "it is of that game that you
expect to make your future, is it not?"

They were walking now arm-in-arm, under the plane-trees shedding their
leaves in the night of November, lukewarm as a night of May, during an
interval of silence when the musicians were resting.

"Yes," replied Ramuntcho, "in our country it is a trade, like any other,
where one may earn a living, as long as strength lasts--and one may go
from time to time to South America, you know, as Irun and Gorosteguy
have done, and bring back twenty, thirty thousand francs for a season,
earned honestly at Buenos Ayres."

"Oh, the Americas--" exclaimed Gracieuse in a joyful enthusiasm--"the
Americas, what happiness! It was always my wish to go across the sea to
those countries!--And we would look for your uncle Ignacio, then go to
my cousin, Bidegaina, who has a farm on the Uruguay, in the prairies--"

She ceased talking, the little girl who had never gone out of that
village which the mountains enclose; she stopped to think of these
far-off lands which haunted her young head because she had, like most
Basques, nomadic ancestors--folks who are called here Americans or
Indians, who pass their adventurous lives on the other side of the ocean
and return to the cherished village only very late, to die. And, while
she dreamed, her nose in the air, her eyes in the black of the clouds
and of the summits, Ramuntcho felt his blood running faster, his
heart beating quicker in the intense joy of what she had just said so
spontaneously. And, inclining his head toward her, he asked, as if to
jest, in a voice infinitely soft and childish:

"We would go? Is that what you said: we would go, you with me? This
signifies therefore that you would consent, a little later, when we
beco