she suggested; "they
are splendid for the soul." He handed her, without reply, into the
small victoria, one of the first in Havana, which had taken the place
of her volanta. In the sun, her shawl, her smile, were dazzling. A
knot of men gathered, gazing at her with longing, regarding Charles
Abbott with insolent resentment and wonder; how, their expressions
made clear the thought, could that insignificant and colorless
foreigner, that tepid American, engage and hold La Clavel, the glory
of Cuba and Spain?

She drove away, shielding her eyes with the fan, and Charles returned
slowly, on foot, to the hotel, reaching it in time for the eleven
o'clock breakfast. Bolting his door, closing the high shutters of his
glassless window, he lay down tired and feverish. The vendors of
oranges cried, far off, their naranjes, naranjes dulces. The bed,
which had no mattress, its sacking covered by a single sheet, the
pillow stuffed hard with cotton, offered him little rest. His body,
wet with sweat, twisted and turned continually, and sleep evaded him;
its peace almost within his grasp, it fled before the hot insistence
of his thoughts. The uncomfortable flesh mocked and dragged at the
spirit. It occurred to him suddenly, devastatingly, that he might fail
in his purpose; the armor of his conviction of invincibility fell
from him with the semblance of a loud ringing.

* * * * *

Of all the disturbing elements in Charles Abbott's present life the
one which, it had seemed, must prove most difficult, Santacilla and
his friends, troubled him least. There was, in their jeering, a
positive quality to be met; his own necessary restraint furnished him
with a sustaining feeling of triumph, stability; in his control, the
sacrifice of his dignity, his actual pride, damaged by La Clavel,
was restored. He acted the part of the infatuated, ubiquitous
youth, he thought, with entire success. It had been hardest at
first--Santacilla, who pretended to find Charles under his feet like
a dog, threatened, if he didn't stay away from the St. Louis, to
fling him down the long flight of stairs descending from the
dancer's room.

This, Charles wholly realized, was not an idle boasting. Seated,
it might be, quietly against the wall, outside the immediate
circle about La Clavel, the officers, the Spanish grandees in
Cuba for pleasure or for the supervision of their copper mines at
Cobra, Charles would watch, study, Ceaza y San