golden quality. The opposite shore, twenty miles away, was distinct, and yet there seemed an opalescent, spume-like haze in the air, the same quality as in the filmy water. Kate could see the white specks of the far-off church towers of Tuliapan.
Below, in the garden below the house, was a thick grove of mango trees. Among the dark and reddish leaves of the mangoes, scarlet little birds were bustling, like suddenly-opening poppy-buds, and pairs of yellow birds, yellow underneath as yellow butterflies, so perfectly clear, went skimming past. When they settled for a moment and closed their wings, they disappeared, for they were grey on top. And when the cardinal birds settled, they too disappeared, for the outside of their wings was brown, like a sheath.
“Birds in this country have all their colour below,” said Kate.
Ramón turned to her suddenly.
“They say the word Mexico means below this!” he said, smiling, and sinking into a rocking chair.
Doña Carlota had made a great effort over herself, and with eyes fixed on the tea-cups, she poured out the tea. She handed him his cup without looking at him. She did not trust herself to look at him. It made her tremble with a strange, hysterical anger: she, who had been married to him for years, and knew him, ah, knew him: and yet, and yet, had not got him at all. None of him.
“Give me a piece of sugar, Carlota,” he said, in his quiet voice.
But at the sound of it, his wife stopped as if some hand had suddenly grasped her.
“Sugar! Sugar!” she repeated abstractedly to herself.