"Because it is so full of flowers. Last week they were all dead and over, but now they have bloomed afresh, and it really is lovely to look at. And there are such numbers of birds there, and of butterflies too, sucking honey from the flowers. Choto, Choto, come here—do not frighten the poor little birds."
The dog, who had run down the slope, came galloping back at Nela's call, and the fluttering republic of birds returned to take possession of their common property.
"I have a perfect horror of the place," said Pablo, pulling the girl's arm. "Now, shall we go as far as the mines? I know the way there, and feel on my own ground; we will go round behind el Barco.—Choto, go on in front, do not get under my feet."
They went down a path cut into steps and soon reached the basin formed by digging out the earth and ore. Leaving the zone of vegetation, they suddenly crossed the boundary line of a geological zone, so to speak, an enormous trench, whose sides, wrought by the pick and shovel, displayed an interesting section of stratification, where the different layers showed the greatest variety of colors and earths. This was the place where Teodoro Golfin had fancied himself in the hull of a wrecked vessel, worn away by the waves—and its popular name el Barco (the ship), had been suggested by that very resemblance. By day, however, the spectator was chiefly struck by the sections of the strata with their sulphurous and carboniferous veins, black sedimentary deposits, lignites, in which jet frequently occurred, streaks of ferruginous earth that looked as if they had been mixed with blood, and large, even layers of slate, split in a thousand places by human devices, bristling with splinters and riven into fissures and clefts, looking like wounds seen through a strong magnifier; while a thread of water, stained with oxide of iron, that flowed down the middle, might be taken for blood.
"Where is our seat?" asked the young man. "Let us go there; we shall be sheltered from the wind."
Out of the bottom of the great cutting they went up by a rough foot-path, that had been made between broken stones and earth overgrown with rank fennel, and at the top they sat down under the shelter of an enormous crag, rent across the middle. The two halves of the rock, standing opposite each other, with their jagged faces, looked for all the world like two yawning jaws trying to meet and close.
"How pleasant it is here!" Pablo said. "Sometimes there is a disagreeable draught through this chasm, but I do not feel it to-day. What we hear is the trickling water down inside the bowels of La Trascava."
"It is very quiet to-day," observed Nela. "Would you like to lie down?"
"That is a good idea! Last night I could not sleep, for thinking of all my father had said to me, of the doctor, of my eyes.—All night I felt as if a hand went into my eyes and opened a closed and moss-grown door." As he spoke he stretched himself at full length and laid his head on Nela's knees.
"A door," he went on, "which was quite in my inmost feeling, opened, as I tell you, showing a way into a room where the idea that haunts me was shut up. Oh! Nela of my heart, best beloved, idolized darling, if only God would grant me the sense I lack. Then I should think myself the happiest of men—for I am almost that already, merely from having you to be the friend and companion of my life. Very little is needed to make us two one—nothing but to see you and rejoice in your beauty, with that joy in seeing which I cannot even comprehend, since I have only a vague conception of it. I have a questioning spirit only because I have no power to see for myself. I fancy it will be like a new way of loving you. I think of nothing but your beauty, still, there is something in it which I cannot realize as my own."