“Sebastião, will you play a malaguenha?”
Sebastião began the prelude to a malaguenha. The sweet and languid melody of this Arabian music enchanted her, giving birth in her soul to romantic dreams of an ideal life under an Andalusian sky. Where? In Malaga or Granada, which, she did not know. All she knew was that those dreams were of a warm and perfumed night in which she sat under the orange-trees, a night illumined by brilliant stars, a lamp shining from among the branches of a tree near by, while a cantador, seated on a Moorish bench, softly hummed a malaguenha to the accompaniment of a guitar, and around her women dressed in red velveteen bodices kept time to the music, clapping their hands together. In that illusion of the senses she fancied she beheld an Andalusian girl, such as one reads of in novels and romances, tender and voluptuous; cavaliers, whose long cloaks, falling in picturesque folds around them, brushed against the walls of dark and narrow streets, faintly illuminated by the tremulous light that burned in the niche of some saint; watchmen, invoking, as they sang out the hours, the name of the Holy Virgin.
“Bravo, Sebastião,” she exclaimed, when he had finished; “bravo! That is ravishing!” And she clapped her hands, demanding a repetition of the piece.
Sebastião rose, smiling, carefully closed the piano, and taking his broad-brimmed hat, stood turning it around between his hands.
“Well, good-night,” he said. “To-morrow, at seven in the morning, I will be here.”
It had been agreed upon that he was to come and waken Jorge, and accompany him in the steamer as far as Barreiro. The good Sebastião! Jorge and Luiza went out into the balcony to see him off. The silence of the night diffused around a gentle melancholy. The gas-lights below had a moribund aspect; the shadow that fell across the street in a straight and abrupt line had in it a tone of softness. The moon covered the white fronts of the houses with a silvery veil, and the paving-stones of the street with a brilliant enamel. The glass panes of a skylight shone in the distance like a sheet of silver; everything was motionless, and instinctively the gaze turned heavenward, toward the silver moon, the dark spots on which stood out in bold relief.
“What a beautiful night!” they both exclaimed at once.
“It makes one long to take a walk, does it not?” said Sebastião from the shadow in the street below.
“The night is enchanting,” responded Jorge and Luiza.
They remained on the balcony, after Sebastião had gone, conversing together in low tones, and gazing absently before them, entranced by the brightness and tranquillity around.