Old dances are simplified of their yearning, bleached by Time.

Yet from one black disc

we tasted again the bite of crude Spanish passion.

... He had got into her courtyard.

She was alone that night.

Through the black night-rain, he sang to her window bars:

Love me, love—ah, love me!

If you will not, I can follow

Into the highest of mountains;

And there, in the wooden cabin,

I will strangle you for your lover.

—That was but rustling of dripping plants in the dark.

More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar.

Love, ah-h! love me, love me!

If you will do this, I can buy

A fringed silk scarf of yellow,

A high comb carved of tortoise;

Then we will dance in the Plaza.

She was alone that night.

He had broken into her courtyard.

Above the gurgling gutters

he heard—

surely—

a door unchained?

The passage was black; but he risked it—

death in the darkness—

or her hot arms—(love—love me ah-h-h!)

"A good old tune," she murmured

—and I found we were dancing.