The beauty which alone would have woven a spell about the place merely lapsed into a background. In itself the voice was not faultless, nor the moon different from other windless, immaculate nights; but the air was sweeter, and the guavas were at the season’s climax, their one day of perfection. They tell you that if you eat guavas in Pica, you become either ill or enchanted; in either case you cannot leave. He must have been talking for a long time. It was as if his voice had been beneath my range of sound, or too soft--though I heard well enough. All at once I began to understand. “Perhaps you have heard of the bush which grows in Patagonia. It is covered with pale yellow flowers. When a match is placed beneath it, the bush blazes forth and is reduced to immediate ashes, all its strength exhausted in a single dazzling effort. It is called _escandalosa_. “Had you let me know two weeks ago that you would come, I would have put a bit of nitrate on the roots of my rose-tree, and it would have blossomed viciously for you!” “Yes,” I said, “but afterwards?” “Oh, to be sure. Then it would have died.” An owl screamed from the top of a _ciruela_ tree, a little owl-of-the-desert, just a few inches high. Pica, the Flower of the Sand! With what golden words borrowed from Hindoo poets might not its charm be told? By what enchantment its suave breezes be recalled? Everybody knows it is a magic spot. Its quiet existence is a sort of self-expression of inmost thoughts without technique. Doctor Stübel, the earthquake specialist, says Pica is an eruption center. CHAPTER V A CLASH OF CONTRASTS I While the mysticism of the Middle Ages was expanding in delicate spires of Gothic architecture, the Inca’s empire was exposing its heart of gold to the blaze of a tropical sun. Their only similarity is that a shadowy veil, half history, half legend, floats between us and them both. But the gold shines through, and the veil cannot conceal its brilliancy.