Then she had to use her iron while it was hot. She lifted one end of the ironing board, drew a light calico gown over it like a ring, put the board down again, and ironed, gradually letting the whole of the gown travel across the board. The shade in which I stood grew smaller, the heat penetrated markedly nearer to me and awakened my daily desire to go to the city park and sit in the shade of its giant trees and bamboo bushes. I lighted a cigarette at one of the little glowing eyes of the charcoal flat-iron, and started away. "_Ate logo, senhor!_" said she, using a phrase that corresponds exactly to the Rhenish "So long!" Since she did not know much Portuguese, she took pleasure in seizing all opportunities to use the most current expressions; but she used these with such perfect pronunciation that you would suppose she had complete command of the language. As was always the case, I was in a peaceful frame of mind when I left her, I was filled with a sense of cosy comfort which gained all the more piquancy because flavored with an infinitely delicate bitterness that I could not understand. In a revery I strolled along through the streets which, because the diminutive houses cast so little shadow, became hotter every minute, and passed slowly out of the city. When I looked up again, I had already passed through the great gate in the wall and felt as though immersed in the more expansive and, from the intermittent shade of shrubs and trees, more invigorating atmosphere of the great park. I stood still and peered into the depth of the garden through the silver-gray columns of two gigantic palms. Thickly surrounded by dark shrubs with a silvery sheen, enormous hedges, and groves of bamboo, a fountain reared the fluttering banner of its spray from the midst of a black pool confined within a white curb; but the bubbling pillar did not attain to the height of its dark sylvan background. In the dim background, however, above the cold deep green of the park, rose a mighty erythrina like a rose-colored flame into the rich blue air, like a monstrous, fiery syringa. The light coursed hotly down the smooth trunks of the palms, golden white it curled about the gentle curve of their slender hips, like frozen silver it weighed upon the serrated palm-leaves, often seeming to slip down and fall, so that the liberated leaf gave a little leap upward into a new bath of silver; the rigid leaves of black-green bushes were sown with immobile, penetrating scintillations; above the masses of dagger-sharp leaves in the grove of bamboo the light swarmed like a golden vapor rolling up, as it were, in itself; red and white and deep violet and yellow and iridescent blue flowers of gigantic size cowered in the dark green; the erythrina stood quietly there upright like a mountain of fire; everything rested voluptuously, or overwhelmed, in the glow of the higher-mounting sun--only the snowy importunity of the fountain wore itself out in impotent resistance to his sway.