That night, in my villa above “the road of the great Moor-killing,” the
nightingales were the only _serenos_. Their song was the song of the
stars; and the song of the stars was the song of the nightingales. At
dawn, from my window, I was taken into the private life of my neighbour
birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and
from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came
up—church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their
masters sang _coplas_ with a lilting Moorish wail.
Once again I went down to look at Carmona’s door, to find it still kept by
guardia civile; and most of the day I spent in the Alhambra, seeing rooms
and courts I had missed yesterday, looking down often into the _patio_ of
the palace in the Albaicín.
I dined in the hotel garden, and before nine I was at the appointed spot
in the road outside the high wall of my Carmen. The moments passed as I
walked up and down, my cigarette a spot of fire in the growing moonlight;
still the gypsy-faced girl did not come.
Twenty minutes late, said my watch, and as I stared at it, a man stopped
in front of me.
“Is the noble señor expecting someone?” he asked.
I put my watch away and looked at him. The moon, obscured though it was by
clouds, showed a tall figure, with strong shoulders, and a face which
seemed in the night as dark as a Moor’s. The man had lifted his hat from
his thick black hair, and I said to myself that he was a model for an
artist who wished to paint a gypsy.