Her presence seemed good to Antonio. Her voice, her cheeks, her arms, her movements were soft and gentle. She had great, mild, stupid, kind eyes, like the eyes of the contented English kine beside the steep stone bridge. Margarida was brainless: but her brainlessness rested his own brains, weary with plans and fears. Sitting beside her, without speaking, brought healing to his fretted spirit. Margarida did not challenge the soul to high romantic passion. She sat there not like a proud maiden to be wooed and won through stress and storm but more like a comely, cosy, docile, loving young matron. Antonio, ever drowsier and drowsier, surrendered himself more and more completely to unheroic peace. He had battled for long years in the teeth of bitter winds and icy currents: but at last he yielded himself up to the deliciousness of drifting down a summer stream, warmed by the sun and hardly ruffled by scented zephyrs. Margarida seemed to have come nearer. She was at the further end of the hearth no longer, but was sitting on one of José's carved coffers at his side. All the room felt soft and silken. As Antonio's drowsy eyes closed, his right arm sought Margarida's waist that he might gently draw her to his breast.... He awoke in an instant and started up with a cry. For two or three moments his wits went on sleeping, and he could not say if he breathed in heaven or on earth or in hell. The fire had almost died out, and he would have been standing in complete darkness if two dull, red eyes had not stared at him from the hearth. Antonio pressed agonizing hands against his throbbing temples and moaned a broken prayer. As he came to himself the door was flung open and José rushed in with a lantern. He had heard the cry. "It is nothing," said Antonio. "I fell asleep in my chair, and I had ... I had a kind of nightmare." "It's these new-fangled French wines of your Worship's," José grumbled. "Give me honest green wine, old-fashioned Portuguese. It drowns your nightmares before they are born." VI Antonio kept his promise and took part in the Thursday serão at the farm of Senhor Jorge.