“There is the town of Santa Fé,” said Catalina, pointing to a speck on the edge of the vega. “Ferdinand and Isabella caused it to be built when they were in camp. The articles of Granada’s capitulation were signed there, and their contract with Columbus. Over there in the Sierras, somewhere, is the spot where Boabdil turned to take a last look at Granada, and was reproached by his mother—who was far more of a man than he was—for weeping like a woman for what he could not defend like a man. When I was a child my mother used to sing me to sleep with ‘The Last Sigh of the Moor.’” And she suddenly trilled forth with an abandonment of sorrow which startled Over more than any phase she had yet exhibited. “‘Ay, nunca, nunca, nunca mas veré!’ That means, ‘Aye, never, never, never more to see,’” she translated, practically. “How close it brings the island of Santa Catalina, undiscovered by the tourist then, and our lonely little inn! My mother always sang me to sleep in a big rocking-chair, and my father sat by a student-lamp and read, frowning until she had finished. It all seems a thousand years ago.” “Did you miss your parents much?” asked Over, curiously. For a second it seemed to him that he saw a window open in the depths of her eyes. Then she turned her back on him. “I don’t live in the past,” she said. “Let us go down into the park. It will be dusk in a few moments, and the nightingales will sing.” They lingered awhile among the terraces watching the sun go down, then descended through the Gate of Justice into the park. There the steep aisles were dim, there was the murmur of running water, and in a few moments the nightingales burst forth into song. Over and Catalina sat down on a grassy bank. There appeared to be no one in the park but themselves. The man looked up, half expecting to see turbaned heads and flashing eyes on the towers and ramparts above; or the glittering cavalcade of Ferdinand and Isabella crowding through the Gate of Justice; or the faithless wife of Boabdil stealing out to her fatal tryst with Hammet of the Abencerrages. In the warm duskiness of the wood under the watch-towers and ramparts, and the fountain of Charles V. beside them, the music of nightingale and distant waters thrilling the soft, voluptuous air, it was easy to imagine that the walls of Granada had yielded to neither the Spaniard nor to time. They were the most romantic moments he had ever known; and the Alhambra is the most romantic ruin on earth, the one where the modern world seems but a bit of prophetic history, and 400 years are as naught.