“You seem weary, little one,” he said at length, taking heed of her drooping attitude. “Let us find a place to sit down. I also begin to feel tired; we have been wandering in the ruins these three hours!”
He moved on, and she kept by his side, with her face averted, that he might not see her tears. They crossed an angle of the court, and entering one of the arches, passed through an open door into the Sala de los Abencerrages. The marble basin of a fountain, now dry, occupied the centre of this room, and upon its rounded edge the two seated themselves.
Here the moonbeams came more faintly, penetrating the open work cloister, and throwing fantastic shadows on the pavement. Beautiful stalactites hung over them, peering downward, as it were, from a bed of shadows. Portions of the walls were dim. The rest gleamed out, with all their delicate tracery revealed, like luminous frost-work, such as you, of a colder climate, find upon your window-panes, when the mornings are unusually cold.
They had been sitting there some minutes, yet I do not think they had spoken. His arm was around her, and it is impossible that he should not have felt the swelling of her heart, for, as I have said, it was flooded with a tender grief, brought on by that hard, hard thing to bear, the first reproof from beloved lips. He was a man of strong feelings, but not one to utter those feelings much in words. A degree of proud reserve followed him even in his moments of deepest tenderness.
No man ever guessed half that was going on in his heart, and what is stranger still, no woman ever knew the whole. There might have been something of pride in his sensations when he saw the entire control that he had gained over that poor, wild heart. For what human being is above pride in that conquest which sweeps the entire life of another into his bosom? But he was touched also with a feeling of sadness, of regret for having moodily reproved her for what was, after all, the spirit of her race. Still he did not speak these regrets, but drew her closer to him, and taking her little brown hand in his, pressed it to his lips.
He felt her heart leap against his arm, but she only crept a little closer to him, trembling all over, and smiling through her tears.
“And do you indeed love me so much?” he said, with a tone of sadness in his voice, for he was asking himself where must all this end; and the answer that presented itself made his better nature recoil.
She drew his hand toward her, and pressed her lips upon the palm. There was something peculiar and child-like in this act. With all her unreserve, it was the only outward proof that she had ever given him of the passion that was transfiguring her whole nature.
While her lips were still upon his palm, he felt her start, listen, and shudder all over. Then clinging to his arm with one hand, she turned her head and looked backward over her shoulder. It was in this chamber that the Abencerrages were supposed to have been beheaded, and a deep, broad stain, which tradition marks out as their blood, discolors half the marble fountain on which the lovers sat. Feeling her shudder, and remarking that her head was turned that way, he supposed that it must be this blood shadow which suddenly occupied her thoughts.
“Nay, how childish,” he was beginning to say; but she broke from his arm, rushed by the fountain, and seizing hold of a slender pillar at the opening of an alcove, all in shadow, as if stricken by some sudden fear, stood peering into the recess.