The sun was just disappearing behind the club-shaped kitchen chimneys of the Moorish palace, and the long, doleful "Wo-o-o-a-aw" of the donkey men, who were bringing a party of Spanish tourists back from Montserrat and the Cork Convent, floated across the lemons and roses of the quintas below, and died away in the silences above us, smothered by the heavy curtain of pine needles.
"Does it satisfy you?" I asked, quietly.
"What—the scenery?"
"No, I don't mean that—you'd be a captious brute if it didn't—but the life."
The man's brow contracted ominously, and he threw away his cigar with unnecessary energy.
"You're used to something better, you see," I insinuated.
"And I am used to this," he replied, shortly.
Then he dropped his chin on to his chest and looked at me from under his brows.
"'WOULD IT BE FORGOTTEN THAT I HAD TO RESIGN MY COMMISSION?'"