"Ah, that I can say; Don Corrie."
The soft household name sounded yet softer in the Andalusian accents. Flavia looked away, feeling her lips quiver.
"Will you tell me your name?" she asked, by way of diversion. "Mine is Flavia Rose. Perhaps we shall see more of each other, if I stay here and you do also."
"I am called Elvira Paredes, señorita. And I shall be here—I cannot go for so long, so long, perhaps never."
Flavia leaned forward, her clear eyes questioning.
"You want to go away? To leave this place for some other?"
The confidence came with an outrush of feeling, a wealth of expression and expressive gestures.
"Señorita, to join my betrothed. Ah, there never was one like him, so beautiful, so brave, so constant like the sun in rising! You cannot know. No one can know who has not seen it. And sing! Under my window he would sing until the birds would hush, hush to listen. I have no marriage-portion, I who am an orphan living with the sister of my mother's cousin. Not for that did Luis hesitate. But the time came when he must do military service; serve in Morocco, señorita, serve among savages who would torture him! And to come back poor as he went. So he left. Far away he journeyed, to New York, which is in America, to find peace and make a home."
"Where you will go to him?"
"Señorita, we hope it. He works, I wait. We write long letters. But it is three years. It costs much to cross the ocean, and one grows old." The brown eyes looked the tragedy of hope deferred.