e proclaimed, "by your valor and
faith and patience; and no alien, myself least of all, could have
been indispensable to you. What I was privileged to do was merely to
hold together some of the more inglorious but necessary parts of your
struggle; to bring, perhaps, some understanding, some good will, from
the world outside. You have added Cuba to the invaluable, the
priceless, parts of the earth where men are free; a deed wrought by
the sacrifice of the best among you. Liberty, as always, is watered by
blood--" he hesitated, frowning, something was wrong about that last
phrase, of, yes--the watered with blood part; sprinkled, nourished,
given birth in? That last was the correct, the inevitable, form. The
hollow disembodied voice of the drill sergeant floated up and then was
lost in the beginning afternoon procession of carriages.

* * * * *

With a larger boutonniere than he would have cared to wear at home, a
tea rose, he was making his way through the El Louvre, when Gaspar
Arco de Vaca rose from a gay table and signalled for him. It was after
Retreta, the trade wind was even more refreshing than customary, and
the spirit of Havana, in the parques and paseos and restaurants, was
high. The Louvre was crowded, a dense mass of feminine color against
the white linen of the men, and an animated chatter, like the bubbles
of champagne made articulate, eddied about the tables laden with
dulces and the cold sweet brightness of ices. He hesitated, but de
Vaca was insistent, and Charles approached the table.

"If you think you can remain by yourself," the Spaniard said
pleasantly, "you are mistaken. For women now, because of the dancer,
you are a figure of enormous interest."

He presented Charles to a petulant woman with a long nose, a seductive
mouth, and black hair low in the French manner; then to a small woman
in a dinner dress everywhere glittering with clear glass beads, and
eyes in which, as he gazed briefly into them, Charles found bottomless
wells of interrogation and promise. He met a girl to whom, then, he
paid little attention, and a man past middle age with cropped grey
hair on a uniformly brown head and the gilt floriations of a general.
A place was made for Charles into which, against his intention, he was
forced by a light insistence. It was, he discovered, beside the girl;
and, because of their proximity, he turned to her.

At once he recognized that she was unusual, strange