“Well,” said Catalina, rising, “I have a fancy we will find out in Granada—by moonlight in the Alhambra and all that sort of thing. One thing is positive—we are in the dark at present, and the conditions are not illuminating. Here comes Mrs. Rothe.” As she moved off she turned suddenly. “If you should continue indefinitely in this painful state of vacillation,” she said, sweetly, “you may consider these two little conversations decently buried. For my part, I like friendship, and we have become quite adept at that.”
“This is Granada—Granada—Granada—and we are living in the Alhambra—somehow I always pictured the Alhambra as a mere palace, not as a whole military town where thousands lived; and to be actually domiciled in one of its old streets—its old, steep, narrow, crooked streets—I don’t quite realize it, do you?”
“I shall feel more romantic when I have cleaned up—and some one has stolen my pipe.”
“Oh, I hate you!” said Catalina, but she forgot him in a moment.
She had persuaded Mrs. Rothe to go to a pension instead of a hotel—she had heard of one frequented mainly by artists—and with less difficulty than she had anticipated, for it was the season of travelling Americans, and her erring but sensitive chaperon was weary of being stared at. The front windows of the pension looked upon a street whose paving-stones and walls had echoed the tramp of Moorish feet for nearly 1000 years, and are still as eloquent of that indomitable race as if the Spanish conquerors had never passed under the Gate of Justice. In an angle at the back of the house was a garden with a long, latticed window in its high wall, and beyond were the great shade-trees of Alhambra Park. There was a sound of running water and the hum of drowsy insects, but it seemed as quiet as a necropolis after the long flight from the station behind the jingling mules into Granada, and the following drive over the rough streets of the city up to the heights of the Alhambra.
Catalina’s room had windows on both street and garden, and she could look down into Over’s room in the other side of the angle, on the floor below. The garden, although the kitchen opened upon it, was full of sweet-smelling flowers and rustic chairs, and at one end was a long table where a man sat painting. There were no palms here, for Granada is 2000 feet above the Mediterranean and the eternal snows are on the Sierras behind her.