“I can stand courts where murder has been done,” she said, “for the sky always seems to clean things up. But that room is full of a sinister atmosphere. I should commit murder myself if I stayed in it too long.”
The impression vanished and she moved her head slowly on the long column of her throat, smiling with her eyes, which met Over’s.
“I hate ugly fancies and atmospheres,” she said, softly. “And the rest of the palace looks like a pleasure house; only I wish there were furniture and curtains—it seems to me they could be reproduced as successfully as the arabesques and roofs. Now one receives the impression that they slept and sat on the floor.”
They were entering the Room of the two Sisters, opposite the Hall of the Abencerrages, once the chief room of the sultana’s winter suite. There are two slabs of marble in the floor that look like recumbent tombstones. What their original purpose was legend sayeth not, unless it was to give an easy designation to a room which needs no such trivial spur to the memory. For the ceiling of this great apartment is one of the curiosities of the world. The dome is like a vast bee-hive, its 5000 cells wrought with the very colors of the flowers from which the ambitious builders brought their honey sweets. It might be a sort of Moorish heaven for the souls of bees, those tiny amazons who alone have demonstrated the superiority of the female over the male.
Catalina mentioned this conceit, and Over laughed grimly.
“When women are willing to do all the work—” he began, and then lifted his hat. Miss Holmes entered the room from the sala beyond.
She came forward with a smile of welcome, her manner quite that of a chatelaine welcoming the stranger to the halls of her ancestors.
“I am so glad I happen to be here,” she said, “I know you are people whom guides only bore. I have lived in the Alhambra three weeks now, and am thinking of offering my services at the office; but you may have them for nothing.” She included Catalina in her smiling gaze. “I hope your headache is better,” she added, politely.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Catalina, who longed to scratch her. She reminded herself of her new rôle, however, and gave her a dazzling smile that filled her eyes with warmth and accented the gray coldness of the orbs, which, like her own, faced Over. “How I envy you for having been here three weeks!” she said. “I feel as if I couldn’t wait to know, to be familiar with it all. Do you live in Spain?”
“If you call boarding in pensions frequented by artists of all the nationalities, living in a country, I have been here a year.”