egg, it chills and dies. Poor old Montes, all his ideas are American and European. And the old Dove of Europe will never hatch the egg of dark-skinned America. The United States can’t die, because it isn’t alive. It is a nestful of china eggs, made of pot. So they can be kept clean.—But here, Cipriano, here, let us hatch the chick before we start cleaning up the nest.”
Cipriano hung his head. He was always testing Ramón, to see if he could change him. When he found he couldn’t, then he submitted, and new little fires of joy sprang up in him. But meanwhile, he had to try, and try again.
“It is no good, trying to mix the two things. At this stage of affairs, at least, they won’t mix. We have to shut our eyes and sink down, sink away from the surface, away, like shadows, down to the bottom. Like the pearl divers. But you keep bobbing up like a cork.”
Cipriano smiled subtly. He knew well enough.
“We’ve got to open the oyster of the cosmos, and get our manhood out of it. Till we’ve got the pearl, we are only gnats on the surface of the ocean,” said Ramón.
“My manhood is like a devil inside me,” said Cipriano.
“It’s very true,” said Ramón. “That’s because the old oyster has him shut up, like a black pearl. You must let him walk out.”
“Ramón,” said Cipriano, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a serpent, and be big enough to wrap one’s folds round the globe of the world, and crush it like that egg?”
Ramón looked at him and laughed.
“I believe we could do that,” said Cipriano, a slow smile curling round his mouth. “And wouldn’t