, in Havana, spies--"

She interrupted him, looking away so that he could see only a trace of
her cheek against the fragment fall of her hair. "It isn't that, but
what Andres said about you."

This admission startled him, and he studied Narcisa--her hands now
tightly clasping the iron railing--with a disturbed wonder. Was it
possible that she cared for him? At home, ignored by a maturity such
as his, she would have been absorbed in the trivial activities of
girls of her own age. But Havana, the tropics, was different. It was
significant, as well, that he was permitted to be with her,
practically alone, beyond the sight and hearing of her mother; the
Escobars, he thought, had hopes of such a consummation. It was
useless, he was solely wedded to Cuba; he had already pictured the
only dramatic accident of the heart that could touch him. Not little
Narcisa! She was turned away from him completely: a lovely back,
straight and narrow, virginal--Domingo Escobar had said this--as a
white rose bud, yet with an impalpable and seductive scent. In other
circumstances, a happier and more casual world, she would have been an
adorable fate. An increasing awkwardness seized him, a conviction of
impotence. "Narcisa," he whispered at her ear; but, before he could
finish his sentence, her face was close to his, her eyes were shut and
the tenderness of her lips unprotected.

Charles put an arm about her slim shoulders and pressed his cheek
against hers. "Listen," he went on, in his lowered voice, patching the
deficiencies of his Spanish with English words clear in their feeling
if not in sound, "nothing could have shown me myself as well as you,
for now I know that I can never give up a thought to anything outside
what I have promised my life to. A great many men are quite happy with
a loving wife and children and a home--a place to go back to always;
and, in a way, since I have known you, I envy them. Their lives are
full of happiness and usefulness and specially peace; but, dearest
Narcisa, I can't be like that, it isn't for me. You see, I have chosen
to love a country; instead of being devoted only to you, there are
thousands of women, rich and poor and black and white, I must give
myself for. I haven't any existence, any rights, of my own; I haven't
any money or time or security to offer. I didn't choose it, no, it
chose me--it's exactly as though I had been stopped on the street and
conscripted. A bugle was blown in my ear. Love, y