brown shoes.
She sat looking back, at the lake-end, the desert of shingle, the blowing, gauzy nets, and, beyond them, the black land with green maize standing, a further fleecy green of trees, and the broken lane leading deep into the rows of old trees, where the soldiers from Jaramay were now riding away on the black horse and the donkey. On the right there was a ranch, too; a long, low black building and a cluster of black huts with tiled roofs, empty gardens with reed fences, clumps of banana and willow trees. All in the changeless, heavy light of the afternoon, the long lake reaching into invisibility, between its unreal mountains.
“It is beautiful here!” said Kate. “One could almost live here.”
“Ramón says he will make the lake the centre of a new world,” said Cipriano. “We will be the gods of the lake.”
“I’m afraid I am just a woman,” said Kate.
His black eyes came round at her swiftly.
“What does it mean, just a woman?” he said, quickly, sternly.
She hung her head. What did it mean? What indeed did it mean? Just a woman! She let her soul sink again into the lovely elusiveness where everything is possible, even that oneself is elusive among the gods.
The motor-boat, with waves slapping behind, was running quickly along the brownish pale water. The soldiers, who were in the front, for balance, crouched on the floor with the glazed, stupefied mask-faces of the people when they are sleepy. And soon they were a heap in the bottom the boat, two little heaps lying in contact.
Cipriano sat behind her, his tunic removed, spreading his white-sleeved arms on the back