By This Time The Boat Which
Touched At Tangier On The Way To Cadiz Stopped Going To Cadiz, And If We
Could Not Go To Cadiz We Did Not Care For Going To Tangier.
It was
something like this, if not quite like it, and it ended in our seeing
Africa only from the southernmost verge of Europe at Tarifa.
At that
little distance across it looked dazzlingly white, like the cotton
vestments of those Moorish marketmen, but probably would have been no
cleaner on closer approach.
III
As a matter of fact, we were very near not going even to Tarifa, though
we had promised ourselves going from the first. But it was very charming
to linger in the civilization of that hotel; to wander through its
garden paths in the afternoon after a forenoon's writing and inhale the
keen aromatic odors of the eucalyptus, and when the day waned to have
tea at an iron table on the seaward terrace. Or if we went to Gibraltar,
it was interesting to wonder why we had gone, and to be so glad of
getting back, and after dinner joining a pleasant international group in
the long reading-room with the hearth-fires at either end which, if you
got near them, were so comforting against the evening chill. Sometimes
the pleasure of the time was heightened by the rain pattering on the
glass roof of the _patio,_ where in the afternoon a bulky Spanish mother
sat mute beside her basket of laces which you could buy if you would,
but need not if you would rather not; in either case she smiled
placidly.
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