dor, he paused and his lips automatically
formed the name Andres Escobar. In a flash he saw the gathering
disintegration of the Escobar family--Vincente dead, his body
dishonored; Narcisa, ineffable, flower-like, sacrificed to dull
ineptitude; Domingo, who had been so cheerfully round, furrowed with
care, his spirit dead before his body; Carmita sorrowing; and Andres,
Andres the beautiful, the young and proud, betrayed, murdered in a
brawl at a negro dance. What disaster! And where, in the power of
accomplishment, they had failed, where, fatally, they had been
vulnerable, was at their hearts, in their love each for the other, or
in the fallibility of such an emotion as Andres felt for Pilar. He,
Charles Abbott, must keep free from that entanglement. This
reassurance, however, was not new; all the while it had supported
him.

He made his way down the broad shallow steps, passing extraordinary
figures--men black and twisted like the carvings of roots in the garb
of holiday minstrels; women coffee-colored and lovely like Jobaba,
their faces pearly with rice powder, in yellow satin or black or raw
purple, their feet in high-heeled white kid slippers. Where they stood
in his way he brushed them unceremoniously, hastily, aside, and he was
followed by low threatening murmurs, witless laughter. A man, loyal to
the Cuban cause, attempted to stop him, to repeat something which, he
assured Charles, was of grave weight; but he went on heedlessly.

His passage became, against his reasoning mind, a flight; and he
cursed, with an unbalanced rage, in a minor frenzy, when he saw that
he would have to walk through a greater part of the body of the
theatre before he could escape. The dancers had, momentarily, thinned
out, and he went directly across the floor. There was a flame before
his eye, the illusion of a shifting screen of blood; and he found
himself facing Pilar de Lima and Andres; beyond, the Spanish officer,
tall and lank and young, was peering at them with an aggressive
spite. Charles turned aside, avoiding the tableau. Then he heard
Andres' exasperated voice ordering the girl to come with him to the
promenade. Instead of that her glimmering eyes, with lights like the
reflection of polished green stones, evading Andres, sought and found
the officer.

Charles Abbott's legs were paralysed, he was held stationary, as
though he were helpless in a dream. His heart pounded and burned, and
a great strangling impulse shook him like