And there came on
Rodriguez that feeling that some deride and that others explain
away, the feeling of which romance is mainly made and which is the
aim and goal of all the earth. And his love for Serafina seemed to
him not only to be an event in his life but to have some part in
veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the blessing of most
distant days: grey beards seemed to look out of graves in
forgotten places to wag approval: hands seemed to beckon to him
out of far-future times, where faces were smiling quietly: and,
dreaming on further still, this vast approval that gave
benediction to his heart's youthful fancy seemed to widen and
widen like the gold of a summer's evening or, the humming of bees
in summer in endless rows of limes, until it became a part of the
story of man. Spring days of his earliest memory seemed to have
their part in it, as well as wonderful evenings of days that were
yet to be, till his love for Serafina was one with the fate of
earth; and, wandering far on their courses, he knew that the stars
blessed it. But Serafina went up to the man on the couch with no
look for Rodriguez.
With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken hidalgo. He
raised himself a little on one elbow. "It is nothing," he said,
"Serafina."
Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with
open and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead, she
spoke in a low voice to him; she lavished upon him sympathy for
which Rodriguez would have offered his head to swords; and all,
thought Rodriguez for three blows from a knave's frying-pan: and
his anger against Morano flared up again fiercely.
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