They were seated so, one afternoon in early March when work was over, smoking in comparative silence, for both were tired. Andrew was thinking that it was nearly a year since he had sailed from New York, that he had had no news from home for almost two months now, and that the little hollow at the base of Sparta Gentian's throat was the most lovely of all created things. He had long ago confided his passion to Sebastian and had received a grave, laconic sympathy in return. Sometimes he wondered at himself for revealing the most hidden trouble of his heart so easily to a foreign laborer--but that ghost of snobbery was quickly laid. His friend understood him, that was enough. But he wondered sometimes, if he understood his friend. The other had told him many things--he could see the barren island of ringdoves and eagles rise before him out of the sea, in Sebastian's words, like a city long-drowned--he could hear the soft slur of the dancers' feet in the rocky streets of Mahon--but the secret springs of Sebastian's mind remained unrevealed. Occasionally, in a chance word or a casual idiom, he could catch a glimpse of some alien, resolved purpose, hidden under the surface of Sebastian's talk like the gleam of a fish, seen far down, in very deep water, but that was all. Still, Andrew decided, he did not like Sebastian any the less for it. He shook out the dottel from his pipe, stretched his arms, and spoke. "She is beautiful as a golden rose," he said in Spanish. "Beautiful. Is she not beautiful, my friend?" Sebastian nodded gravely. "All women are beautiful, but only one to a lover," he said, reflectively, "It is well, so. When do you speak to her father, amigo?" "Soon," said Andrew, "As soon as I have any notion there is hope for me in her mind." "You must serenade her more often," said Sebastian smiling. "No." Andrew smiled, too. "I have told you we have not the custom of the serenade." "That is bad," said Sebastian seriously. "Guitar-music comes like a child to a woman's heart--it can enter where a man must stay out in the darkness. I would get you a guitar, my friend, if you had need of it. Tonight is a night for love and the guitar." "That is true," said Andrew, nodding, "But you, Sebastian--how do you know? Have you never been in love?" Sebastian regarded the bowl of his pipe. "Yes. I have been in love," he said. "But I've never seen you with a girl." "No," said Sebastian. "You have never seen me with a girl." His face was masked. "And yet--what happened, Sebastian?--Are you still, perhaps--" "It is possible," said Sebastian, smiling. "Let us talk no more of it, my friend. Let us talk of your love instead--and wish you good fortune." Andrew felt rebuffed, but he respected the other's reticence. Besides, it was so very much more interesting to pour his own doubts and fears in Sebastian's sympathetic ear. "Perhaps, I will find my rose tonight," he said, tossing a pebble idly in his hand, "Perhaps."