Tomorrow he might be playing and singing to his black horse's philosophically swaying tail, on the road to the south of France.

Toward this ambulant Rango, Djuna leaned to catch all that his music contained, and her ear detected the presence of this unattainable island of joy which she pursued, which she had glimpsed at the party she had never attended but watched from her window as a girl. And like some lost voyager in a desert, she leaned more and more eagerly toward this musical mirage of a pleasure never known to her, the pleasure of freedom.

"Rango, would you play once for my dancing?" she asked softly and fervently, and Rango stopped on his way out to bow to her, a bow of consent which took centuries of stylization and nobility of bearing to create, a bow indicating the largesse of gesture of a man who had never been bound.

"Whenever you wish."

As they planned for the day and hour, and while she gave him her address, they walked instinctively toward the river.

Their shadows walking before them revealed the contrast between them. His body occupied twice the space of hers. She walked unswerving like an arrow, while he ambled. His hands trembled while lighting her cigarette, and hers were steady.

"I'm not drunk," he said, laughing, "but I've been drunk so often that my hands have remained unsteady for life, I guess."

"Where is your cart and horse, Rango?"

"I have no cart and horse. Not for a long time. Not since Zora fell ill, years ago."

"Zora?"

"My wife."

"Is your wife a gypsy, too?"

"Neither my wife nor I. I was born in Guatemala, at the top of the highest mountain. Are you disappointed? That legend was necessary to keep up, for the night club, to earn a living. It protects me, too. I have a family in Guatemala who would be ashamed of my present life. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. I was brought up on a ranch. Even today my friends say: 'Rango, where is your horse? You always look as if you had left your horse tied to the gate.' I lived with the gypsies in the south of France. They taught me to play. They taught me to live as they do. The men don't work; they play the guitar and sing. The women take care of them by stealing food and concealing it under their wide skirts. Zora never learned that! She got very ill. I had to give up roaming. We're home now. Do you want to come in?"

Djuna looked at the gray stone house.

She had not yet effaced from her eyes the image of Rango on the open road. The contrast was painful and she took a step backward, suddenly intimidated by a Rango without his horse, without his freedom.