st onza of gold. I've seen it in you very
lately, but give it up. Or don't give it up. Either way you are
unimportant. I can't understand why you are still here, why I permit
you to live. If I remember it I'll speak to my sergeant, Javier Gua:
he performs such an errand to a nicety. I have taken a dislike to you,
very unreasonably, for you are no more than a camarone. I believe, for
all your appearance of money, that La Clavel supports you; it is her
doblons, I am certain, you gamble away and spend for food."

Charles Abbott smiled at the insult:

"On one hand I hear that she has thrown me over and then you say that
she supports me. Which, I wonder, is to be preferred? But neither,
fortunately, is true. I can still buy her a bouquet of camellias and
she will still wear it. As for the money, I never lose at gambling,
Santacilla, I am always successful; the cards are in my favor. If I
bet on the black, it turns up; and when I choose the red, affairs are
red."

Santacilla's uneasy eyes shifted over him suspiciously. "Blood and
death, that is what black and red are," he said. "But you are not the
dispenser of fate." The peak of his cockaded hat threw a shadow over
his sanguine face to the chin. "A camarone," he repeated, "a stalk of
celery. Gua, and I'll remember to tell him, will part you from your
conceit." There was a metallic crowing of roosters as the officer
turned away.

* * * * *

La Clavel noticed a marked difference in Charles, but proclaimed that
it was no more than an increase in his natural propensity for
high-mindedness. It fatigued her, she declared, to be with him, made
her dizzy to gaze up at his altitude of mind. He was seated in her
room, the hairdresser was sweating in the attempt to produce an effect
she was describing to him with phrases as stinging as the whip of
foils, while Charles watched her with a degree of annoyance. Her
humors, where he was concerned, were unpredictable; and lately she had
found a special delight in attacks on his dignity. She said and did
things--an air of innocence hiding her malice--indecently ribald that
shook his firmest efforts to appear, to be, unconcerned.

At last, in a volatile rage, she dismissed the servant with his tongs
and pomatum and crimping leads, and swore to Charles Abbott that she
was going to the Argentine by the first boat that offered passage.

"I am sick of Cuba, and I've forgotten that I am an artist, and that
is