, still with a slight shudder of
delight, the soft dragging feel of her fingers on his cheek. He tied
the shawl up sombrely, oppressed by the conviction of mischance he had
expressed to Andres, and despatched it.

Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she
hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America--the
Argentine for which La Clavel had longed--and she was welcome to try
her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andres. A sugar
bag could easily, at the appropriate moment, be slipped over her head,
and a bateau carry her out, with a sum of gold, at night to a
departing ship. There would be no trouble, after she had been seen, in
getting her on board. And Charles Abbott thought of her, in her silent
whiteness, corrupting one by one the officers and crew; a vague
hatred would spread over the deck, forward and aft; and through the
cabins, the hearts, her suggestions and breath of evil touched. They
would never see Mexico, he decided; but, on a calm purple night in the
Gulf, a sanguine and volcanic inferno of blackened passion would burst
around the flicker of her blanched dress and face no colder in death
than in life.

* * * * *

Charles Abbott's thoughts returned continually to Andres; in the
shadowy region of his brain the latter was like a vividly and singly
illuminated figure. He remembered, too, the occasion of his first
seeing Andres, at the Hotel Inglaterra: they had gone together into
the restaurant, where, over rum punches and cigars, the love he had
for him had been born at once. It was curious--that feeling; a thing
wholly immaterial, idealizing. He had speculated about it before, but
without coming to the end of its possibilities, the bottom of its
meaning. There was no need to search for a reason for the love of
women; that, it might be, was no more than mechanical, the allurement
cast by nature about its automatic purpose. It belonged to earth,
where it touched any sky was not Charles' concern; but his friendship
for Andres Escobar had no relation to material ends.

At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities
perceptible to his mind, to analysis; he had often reviewed
them--Andres' deep sense of honor, his allegiance to a conduct free of
self, his generosity, his slightly dramatic but inflexible courage,
the fastidious manners of his person. His clothes, the sprig of mimosa
he preferred, the angl