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CHAPTER XXXIV
A CASTLE IN SPAIN
In those lean ruthless years
When I learnt life’s taste, and ’twas bitter with sweat
And salt with swallowed tears.
Nor soil her dainty shoe . . .
I see the road, but the way is barred,
And what’s a man to do?”
And it was just as beautiful as any of their dreams, and lasted longer. They stayed for many weeks; they rode under violet evening skies, up the steep, twisting paths to enchanted cities, high-walled and silent, where Time had been asleep for the last four centuries at least, and then they were very happy.
But better still were the halts by the wayside when Tony built the fire and they cooked a meal together. The taciturn José had at first been filled with a contemptuous astonishment at these proceedings. It was a new kind of caballero who did his own cooking! But, as the days passed, he was forced to observe that it was the genuine kind after all, which made no claims because it was so sure—and understood the ways of the road like a gitano. As for the Doña Pamela, she was as beautiful as the saints of heaven and above criticism. And they were both so young and so entirely in love with each other, two qualities with which José was unreservedly in sympathy, little as his exterior seemed to promise it.
Now he sat at a short distance, having brought the horse
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