"Fair d-dancer," he began, "w-will you c-come--?"
"I will not!" screamed Catalina, and threw her shoe at him.
Then the miserable girl sank down upon her couch and fell into a fit of weeping.
At twilight, Catalina stood upon that same balcony where Hamet had told her what the court astrologer had predicted. All had come true, and the conquest of Granada marked the end of Moorish power in Spain.
To Catalina came the voice of the town be-low. The Sierra Nevada Mountains raised their snowy tips, and the smell of little donkeys mingled with mountain perfumes.
One star shone, Moor-like, in the deep blue heaven. There was a fringe of orange light where the sun had just gone to bed, leaving his rosy night robe hanging on the sky.
But Catalina saw none of this beauty. Her eyes and her heart were blind with unreasonable rage. Fleeing from the balcony, she ran into the Myrtle Court.
Raising her pale little face to the fast-darkening sky, she cried, "I shall never, never, never dance again!"
With that, she threw her castanets into the deep pool in the center of the court. They sank quickly to the bottom, down, down in a black circle. The magic castanets!
Not until several days later, when Catalina's temper had cooled, did she suddenly remember the old verse which her grandmother had taught her:
"_Castanets, with magic spell, Never lose or give or sell; If you do, then grief and strife Will follow you through all your life._"
What had she done? How could she have thrown away the magic castanets?
Quickly Catalina returned to the Myrtle Court. A palace attendant promised to search the pool for her. But when he did, the castanets were nowhere to be found.
The story goes that not until Catalina became a very old lady did she recover the castanets. And then nobody rightly knows how it came about.
But what we do know is that never again did Catalina see her sweetheart. For a year after he had left her, Hamet was killed in the wars.
If Catalina had not lost her temper, she would not have lost the magic castanets. And if she had not lost the magic castanets--well, would her story, perhaps, have been different?
Several days passed before Pilar was able to leave her house and go to Juan's shop--several anxious days. Because that night, her grandfather had grown worse, and she had been obliged to call the doctor.