was the mere
waving of a reed. Again and again the Spaniard's foil, as cruelly and
vitally direct as at the first pass, struck within Charles' guard. The
face of wood, of yellow wood, the eyes that were bits of coal, behind
the mask, pursued him into the back of his brain. It stirred, there, a
smothering instinct, a dormant memory, and Charles, with a wrenching
effort, in a voice thin like a trickle of water from a spigot, said
again, "--a most beautiful hand."

Sharply, incomprehensibly, it was over. Drooping forward upon his
knees, dropping his foil from paralysed fingers, he saw de Vaca, with
his mask on an arm, frowning.

"Now," Charles Abbott thought luxuriously, "I can faint and be damned
to them."

The cloud of darkness which flowed over him was empty of the vileness
of fear; rather, like the beneficence of night, it was an utterly
peaceful remission of the flesh.

* * * * *

His physical exhaustion, the weariness of his mind, continued in a
settled lassitude through the following day. He was to see Andres
Escobar, give him what information he had had from La Clavel, the next
morning at the baths of the Campos Eliseos; and meanwhile he scarcely
stirred from the San Felipe. Charles, for the time, lacked the bravado
necessary for the sustaining of his pretence. His thoughts, turned in
upon his own acts and prospects, dwelt quietly on his determination.
He had changed appreciably during his stay in Havana; even his
physiognomy was different how, he couldn't say, but he was aware that
his expression had, well, hardened. The cure which had been the
principally hoped-for result of Cuba was complete. In spite of his
collapse in the fencing school, he was more compactly strong than ever
before. It occurred to him that, now, he might be described as a man.

This brought him a certain pleasure, and, in keeping with that state,
he tried to simplify, to comprehend, the idealism which dominated him.
He didn't want to grasp vainly at rosy clouds. His first attitude,
one of hardly more than boyish excitement, had soon become a deep
impersonal engagement--he had promised himself to Cuba. That will was
stronger than ever; but the schooling of the past weeks, together with
the stiffening of his spirit, had bred a new practicality in him,
superior, he felt, to any sheer heroics. He vastly preferred the
latter, he hadn't totally lost the inspiring mental picture of a
glorious sacrifice; but he