"Just as you trust in Marcelino, that is what I mean. God bless you, I shall go away very happy, as happy as I ever shall be."
"Go away! are you going? Where to?"
"I am going back again outside, I shall probably not return for a month or two."
"But you are not going now?"
"Yes, now at once. I only wished to speak with you, and win that promise from your own lips before I went. My horse is coming, I shall wait for him there beyond the fence where Doña Constancia is standing."
"You were always wise, now wiser than ever before," said Dolores, stepping closer to him and laying her disengaged hand upon his arm. But Evaña shrank from her as though this mute caress were a pain to him, and they walked on side by side until they emerged from between the rows of poplars out upon the open plain, and rejoined the others who there awaited them.
"Mamma," said Dolores, "you promised me that I should see the sunset, but there will be no sunset for us to look on to-night."
Far away on the western horizon there lay a bank of dull grey clouds, behind which the sun had already sunk. From behind these clouds sprang diverging rays of orange and gold, stretching up over the grey sky almost to the zenith, and tinging all objects upon which they shone with the reflection of their brilliance.
"No, we shall not see the sunset," said Gordon. "That cloud is a veil which hides him from us, but if it were not for that cloud we could not look steadily upon the western sky, the sun would dazzle our eyes, and we should see nothing. Is not this that we can look upon more beautiful than any sunset?"
"It is the sunset all the same," said Dolores, "only that the sun is wanting."