The visitors had begun to leave the park, the light crunching of the gravel under their feet sounding fainter and fainter in the distance. But the two friends were in the habit of remaining to “lock up the place” as the saying is, for it was precisely at the sunset hour that Lucía thought the park most beautiful in this melancholy autumnal season. The dying rays of the sun, now low in the western sky, fell almost horizontally on the grassy meads, lighting them up with hues like liquid gold. The dark cones of the fir trees dotted this ocean of light in which their shadows were disproportionately prolonged. The plane trees and the Indian chestnuts were dropping their leaves, and from time to time a burr would fall to the ground with a hard, dull sound, and opening allow the shining chestnut to roll out. In the large flower-knots, which contrasted with the green of the grass, the pale eglantine dropped its fragile petals at the faintest breeze, the verbenas trailed themselves languidly, as if weary of life, their capriciously growing stalks breaking the oval outlines of the bed; the sweet milfoil raised its shower of blue stars, and the rare coleuses displayed the exotic tints and the metallic luster of their spotted leaves, resembling the scales of a serpent, white with black spots, green with flesh-colored veins, dark amaranth striped with copperish red. A profound thrill, precursor of winter, ran through all nature, who seemed to have adorned herself in her richest attire for her death. Thus, the virgin vine was arrayed in her splendid purple robe and the white poplar raised coquettishly its plumy white crest; thus the coralline decked itself with chains and rings of blood-red coral and the zinnias ran through the whole scale of vivid colors in their broidered petticoats. The striped maize shook its green and white-striped silken skirts with melodious rustle, and far away on the edge of the meadow, bathed in sunlight, a few tender saplings bent their youthful heads. The dead leaves covered the paths in such abundance that Lucía felt with delight her foot sink up to the ankle in the soft carpet. The contact of the edge of her gown with the leaves produced a quick murmuring sound, like the hurried breathing of some one following close behind; and, a prey to childish terror, she would turn back her head now and again and smile at herself when she saw that her fears were illusory. There were many varieties of leaves, some dark, decayed, almost rotted; others dry, brittle, shriveled; others yellow or still greenish, moist with the sap of the branch through which they had drawn their life. The carpet lay thicker in the shady spots by the borders of the lake, whose surface rippled like undulating glass at the light contact of the evening breeze, breaking into innumerable wavelets, that dashed unceasingly against one another.