“Yes, I know the place,” said Quentin with aplomb, though never in his life had he heard any one mention the name of the tiny Basque village.
“A great city.”
“Indeed it is.”
Having made this remark, Quentin lit a cigarette, passed his hand along the blurred windowpane until he had made it transparent, and began to hum to himself as he contemplated the landscape. The humid, rainy weather had saddened the deserted fields. As far as one could see there were no hamlets, no villages—only here and there a dark farmhouse in the distance.
They passed abandoned stations, crossed huge olive groves with trees planted in rows in great squares on the ruddy hillsides. The train approached a broad and muddy river.
“The Guadalquivir?” inquired the Frenchman.
“I don’t know,” replied Quentin absently. Then, doubtless, this confession of ignorance seemed ill-advised, for he looked at the river as if he expected it to tell him its name, and added: “It is a tributary of the Guadalquivir.”
“Ah! And what is its name?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t believe it has any.”
The rain increased in violence. The country was slowly being converted into a mudhole. The older leaves of the wet olive trees shone a dark brown; the new ones glistened like metal. As the train slackened its speed, the rain seemed to grow more intense. One could hear the patter of the drops on the roof of the coach, and the water slid along the windows in broad gleaming bands.