It was in a fever of uncertainty that I must spend the next four-and-twenty hours.
XXXVII
Dreams and an Awakening
That night, in my villa above “the road of the great Moor-killing,” the nightingales were the only serenos. Their song was the song of the stars; and the song of the stars was the song of the nightingales. At dawn, from my window, I was taken into the private life of my neighbour birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came up—church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their masters sang coplas with a lilting Moorish wail.
Once again I went down to look at Carmona's door, to find it still kept by guardia civile; and most of the day I spent in the Alhambra, seeing rooms and courts I had missed yesterday, looking down often into the patio of the palace in the Albaicín.
I dined in the hotel garden, and before nine I was at the appointed spot in the road outside the high wall of my Carmen. The moments passed as I walked up and down, my cigarette a spot of fire in the growing moonlight; still the gypsy-faced girl did not come.
Twenty minutes late, said my watch, and as I stared at it, a man stopped in front of me.
“Is the noble señor expecting someone?” he asked.