When they re-entered the carriage, night was approaching, and the sun was sinking in the west with the swiftness peculiar to autumn. They closed the windows on one side of the compartment and the flickering light played on the ceiling of the carriage, appearing and disappearing like children playing hide and seek. The mountains grew black, the clouds in the distance turned flame color, then faded, one by one, like a rose of fire dropping its glowing petals. The conversation between Artegui and Lucía languished and then ceased entirely, both relapsing into a gloomy silence,--he showing his accustomed air of fatigue, she lost in a profound revery, dominated by the saddening influence of the hour. The twilight deepened, and from one of the carriages could be heard rising above the noise made in its slow progress by the train, a sorrowful and passionate chorus in a foreign tongue; a _zortzico_, intoned in deep, full voices by a party of young Biscayans on their way to Bayonne. Now and then a cascade of mocking laughter interrupted the song; then the chorus would rise again, tender and melancholy as a sigh, toward the heavens, black now as ink. Lucía listened, and the train, slowly making the descent, accompanied with its deep vibration the voices of the singers.
The arrival at Bayonne surprised Artegui and Lucía as if they had wakened from a prolonged sleep. Artegui quickly drew his hand away from the knob of the window on which it had been resting and the young girl looked around her with an air of surprise. She noticed that it had grown cool, and she buttoned her collar and put on her necktie. Men with woolen caps, girls wearing handkerchiefs fastened at the back of the head, a stream of passengers of diverse appearance and social condition pushed and elbowed one another and bustled about in the large station. Artegui gave his arm to his companion so that they might not lose each other in the crowd.
“Had your husband decided on any particular hotel at which to stop in Bayonne?” he asked.
“I think,” murmured Lucía, making an effort to remember, “that I heard him mention a hotel called San Estéban. I remembered it because I have a very pretty picture of that saint in my missal.”