To get away.… To get away.… To run, to fly, to take a fast train, to be whirled off with the speed of thought, farther than the Horn, farther than dream could compass. To be a dead leaf, dashed out into space, among the constellations—beyond the Pole Star and the Bear, beyond the uttermost sun, into the freezing Nothing of Nescience. Our Father, Which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy … In Ronda, for example. If they could only get to Ronda, the two of them, with enough money to live there. Far, far away. In that little blue-plastered villa on the mountain slope below the town, surrounded by olive orchards and orchards of peaches and almond orchards and the white-blossoming cherries. And the river winding across the vega, dashing down among boulders toward the chasm, the sonorous deep gorge of virgin rock, with its caves and cold springs, and the kestrels sailing, brown-winged, from ledge to ledge, and the wild pigeons nesting among the prickly pear. In that blue-walled villa, with the red pan-tiled roof, and the tall grass coming to the door, and dwarf poppies among the olive trees, and quicksilver lizards darting in and out of the tangles of vetch. Elizabeth and himself sitting in the sparse shade of an olive tree, reading together, talking, or simply musing—all these anguishes forgotten, all of it engulfed soundlessly and tracelessly in the past.… Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done … And the goats with bells, going up the rocky slope toward the walled cemetery, and the donkeys with bells filing down the rubble path to the mill in the gorge, their baskets heavy with wheat, the small boy running after them with an olive switch, shouting bur-r-r-r-r-o, and flinging a fragment of Moorish masonry to turn the leader from left to right.… As it is in Heaven. Give us, this day … Everywhere, on every side, that inviolable and infinite stillness, the mountain stillness, desolate stillness of water and living rock, stillness in which bells could be heard for miles, across the valley, and the harsh caterwauling of the peacocks from the pine-hidden hill beyond the river, and the cry of the pair of great eagles that circled at evening from edge to edge of the gaunt amphitheater of the stony valley. In this stillness they would find peace; among the sharp aromatic smells of the mountain herbs they would find comfort; strolling up the rocky slope at dusk to enter the little town and walk in the idle crowds that filled the white-walled streets. And then a café, the marble-topped table, coffee and aguardiente, the little liqueur glasses standing in puddled saucers, the tasseled bottles, the enameled mirrors with their absurd pictures of the gypsy Cordobesita.… And the lottery-ticket sellers, the patient old women with charming smiles, holding out their strips of lottery tickets.… For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.…