Stephen would ask her: ‘Do I content you? Tell me, is there anything you want in the world?’ Mary’s answer was always the same; she would say very gravely: ‘Only you, Stephen.’ Ramon had begun to speculate about them, these two Englishwomen who were so devoted. He would shrug his shoulders—Dios! What did it matter? They were courteous to him and exceedingly generous. If the elder one had an ugly red scar down her cheek, the younger one seemed not to mind it. The younger one was beautiful though, as beautiful as the santa noche . . . some day she would get a real man to love her. As for Concha and the cross-eyed Esmeralda, their tongues were muted by their ill-gotten gains. They grew rich thanks to Stephen’s complete indifference to the price of such trifles as sugar and candles. Esmeralda’s afflicted eyes were quite sharp, yet she said to Concha: ‘I see less than nothing.’ And Concha answered: ‘I also see nothing; it is better to suppose that there is nothing to see. They are wealthy and the big one is very careless—she trusts me completely and I do my utmost. She is so taken up with the amighita that I really believe I could easily rob her! Quien sabe? They are certainly queer those two—however, I am blind, it is better so; and in any case they are only the English!’ But Pedro was very sorely afflicted, for Pedro had fallen in love with Mary, and now he must stay at home in the garden when she and Stephen rode up to the mountains. Now they wished to be all alone it seemed, and what food they took would be stuffed into a pocket. It was spring and Pedro was deeply enamoured, so that he sighed as he tended the roses, sighed and stubbed the hard earth with his toes, and made insolent faces at the good-tempered Ramon, and killed flies with a kind of grim desperation, and sang songs of longing under his breath: ‘A-a-a-y! Thou art to me as the mountain. Would I could melt thy virginal snows. . . .’ ‘Would I could kick thy behind!’ grinned Ramon. One evening Mary asked Pedro to sing, speaking to him in her halting Spanish. So Pedro went off and got his guitar; but when he must stand there and sing before Mary he could only stammer a childish old song having in it nothing of passion and longing: ‘I was born on a reef that is washed by the sea; It is a part of Spain that is called Teneriffe. I was born on a reef. . . .’ sang the unhappy Pedro. Stephen felt sorry for the lanky boy with the lovesick eyes, and so to console him she offered him money, ten pesetas—for she knew that these people set much store by money. But Pedro seemed to have grown very tall as he gently but firmly refused consolation. Then he suddenly burst into tears and fled, leaving his little guitar behind him. 3