"It is to teach you better. I know what you toreros are. If I were to let myself be trampled on once, for ever after you would shake me like a gipsy of Triana. I am glad I did it. You must keep your distance."
One evening in early spring, they were returning from a trial of calves at one of the farms belonging to the Marquis, who with some other friends was riding home along the road.
Doña Sol, followed by the espada, turned her horse into the fields, delighting in the soft sward under their hoofs, which at this season was carpeted with spring flowers.
The setting sun dyed everything with crimson, lengthening indefinitely the shadows of the riders with their long lances over their shoulders, and the broad river half hidden among the vegetation rolled along one side of the meadows.
Doña Sol looked at Gallardo with imperious eyes.
"Put your arm round my waist."
The espada obeyed, and so they rode on, their horses close together, the woman watching their shadows thrown as one by the setting sun on the grass.
"It seems as though we were living in another world," she murmured,—"a legendary world, something like one sees on the tapestries, the loving knight and the amazon travelling together, their lances on their shoulders in search of adventures and dangers. But you do not understand all this—dunce of my heart. Answer truly, you do not understand me?"
The torero smiled, showing his beautiful strong teeth of luminous whiteness. She, as if attracted by his rough ignorance, drew closer to him, laying her head on his shoulder, shivering as she felt his breath on the back of her neck.
They rode on in silence. Doña Sol seemed to have fallen asleep on the torero's shoulder. Suddenly her eyes opened, flashing with that strange light which was always the precursor of the most extraordinary questions.