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trumpets in his heart. He seemed to see the great gray piles
of granite set in old Spanish towns amid a landscape tawny,
wild, and windswept.
‘I’ve always thought I should love to go to Seville,’ he said
casually, when Athelny, with one hand dramatically uplift-
ed, paused for a moment.
‘Seville!’ cried Athelny. ‘No, no, don’t go there. Seville: it
brings to the mind girls dancing with castanets, singing in
gardens by the Guadalquivir, bull-fights, orange-blossom,
mantillas, mantones de Manila. It is the Spain of comic op-
era and Montmartre. Its facile charm can offer permanent
entertainment only to an intelligence which is superficial.
Theophile Gautier got out of Seville all that it has to offer.
We who come after him can only repeat his sensations. He
put large fat hands on the obvious and there is nothing but
the obvious there; and it is all finger-marked and frayed.
Murillo is its painter.’
Athelny got up from his chair, walked over to the Span-
ish cabinet, let down the front with its great gilt hinges and
gorgeous lock, and displayed a series of little drawers. He
took out a bundle of photographs.
‘Do you know El Greco?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I remember one of the men in Paris was awfully im-
pressed by him.’
‘El Greco was the painter of Toledo. Betty couldn’t find
the photograph I wanted to show you. It’s a picture that El
Greco painted of the city he loved, and it’s truer than any
photograph. Come and sit at the table.’
Philip dragged his chair forward, and Athelny set the

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