ve of his
arm, he indicated the freedom of the sea beyond.

Andres Escobar followed him over the stone barrier, and together they
swam steadily out into the blue. Finally, they rested, floating, and
Charles diffidently related what was in his heart. His friend, less
secure in the water, listened with a gravity occasionally marred by a
mouthful of sea.

"You are right," he agreed, when Charles had finished. "Although you
have put it modestly, I think--many of us admit--that you may be a
strong man in Cuba. Indeed, I have heard it said that you should go
back to America, and put more intensity into the Junta. Naturally I
should regret that, but we must all do what, in the end, is best.
Charles, there is a great deal of water under and around us, and I
should feel better nearer the Campos Eliseos."

"Wait," Charles Abbott replied with a touch of impatience; "you are
quite safe, there is no tide at present." Floating in the calm
immensity, his arms outspread, his face, at once burned by the sun and
lapped by water, turned to the opposed azure above, he drew in
accession after accession of a determination like peace. Nothing
should upset what he had planned. There was a stir beside him--Andre
Escobar was returning to the shore, and lazily, thoughtfully, he swam
back. The Cuban left immediately, for breakfast; but Charles lingered
in the pool, lounging upon the wooden grilling with a cigarette. One
by one the bathers went away. The sky, the sea, were a blaze of blue.
The clatter of hoofs, the caleseros' departing cries, sounded from the
Paseo. "Charles Abbott," he repeated his own name aloud with an accent
of surprise. What, whom, did it describe? He gazed down over his
drying body. This, then, was he--the two legs, thin but sufficiently
muscular, the trunk in a swimming suit, the arms and hands! His hidden
brain, his invisible mind, was himself as well; and, of the two, the
mind and the body, the unseen was overwhelmingly the more important.
He remembered how, fencing with de Vaca, the body had failed him
utterly; de Vaca, attacking his will, was contemptuous of the other
... and his will had survived. Rising, he felt that he commanded
himself absolutely; he had no sympathy, no patience, for frailty, for
a failure through the celebrated weaknesses of humanity: hardness was
the indispensable trait of success.

* * * * *

The whole of reasonably intelligent life, Charles discovered, was
di