It did not now seem likely that we should ever reach Gordova, though
people made repeated expeditions to the front of the train, and came
back reporting that in an hour we should start. We interested ourselves
as intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment,
London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied,
who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our
interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest
taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or
fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our
train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed
to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned
that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly
concerned for her he came back and relieved the anxiety which the girl
herself had apparently not shared even under pressure of the whole
compartment's sympathy.
IV
The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank
with that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed
crimson, turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the
summits billowing softly westward.
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