saw that it was a locket—pressed it to her withered lips with a singular intensity of passion; pressed it there again and again—and that sudden flash of something long gone, of a spark, dying, perhaps, but which in that ruined body should have been long dead, moved me with uneasiness, as if I were watching, and a party to, a sacrilege.
But she dropped her hands upon her lap in a gesture of infinite hopelessness and she began to speak, to speak in a queer sing-song, a monotonous chant, like some religious recital of her Malay ancestors suddenly coming back to her through the ages.
"Ah, he was beautiful, señor; he was beautiful, he was beautiful, he was beautiful! He was tall and straight like the coco tree; his hair curled like the waves upon the sand, and his eyes were deep and soft like the pools of the Cabancalan. He came to me from over the seas, señor; from far-away Spain. I was standing on the beach, right over there. There were many boat-loads of soldiers landing, and he was on the foremost prao. It came straight to me, foaming with eagerness, its wings spread out like those of a butterfly, flying over the waves, and he stood at the bow. His cap was in his hand; the wind blew his hair of gold into a halo like that of the Christ of the Santa Iglesia; the sun beat down upon
