“This is horrible,” she muttered. “I want to go.”
But she did not go.
More picadors, more bleeding horses. Then banderilleros who, dancing nimbly, buried their flag-adorned darts in the bleeding neck of the bull with subtle, playful cruelty. Meanwhile the sunlight lay like fire on the yellow sand, the red blood stains, and the bright shawls of the women on the rails of the boxes. Even the rising metallic sound of thousands of voices seemed to be burnt through by the heat of the sun.
Then the espada entered. With his knee breeches, slippers and pouched hair he seemed to have stepped straight out of a Mozart opera.
Swinging his red cloth he dances an elegant Death dance before he draws his weapon. Now everything gleams bright, the sun, eyes, the thin fire-shaft of the sword. His posture, as with his weapon raised to the level of his eyes he calmly awaits the onslaught of the bull, is extremely graceful. Now the fire of the fine tongue of steel is suddenly extinguished in the bull’s neck, the Colossus staggers and falls heavily.
Hedvig sat mute and pale with devouring eyes. She was staring at the gate from which the next bull would rush in....
When they drove home in the first yellow twilight Percy’s arm stole round her waist.
“I believe all the same Toledo has amused itself in Seville,” he smiled. “Wasn’t that a fine way of getting the sanatorium out of the system?”
Hedvig pushed away his arm almost unkindly:
“Don’t laugh at everything,” she muttered.