or all of Tommy's
banter, nor Madame Butterfly sung in Spanish (as if it could!) succeeded
in restoring Monsieur to a normal temper.

"We've simply got to make him laugh," I whispered to Tommy. "It's a
matter of principle now!"

"Then wait till we have supper, and get him soused," my confederate
cautiously replied. "That'll do it. But you'd better not drink much," he
added. "How are the nerves this evening?"

"I've almost forgotten them," I answered.

But Tommy was persistent at times. Unknown to me he was now preparing a
report to wire the Mater.

"Sleeping better?" he asked.

"Lots."

"Lying to me?"

"A little," I laughed outright. "But honestly I'm in heaps better
shape!"

"Oh, I've seen you improving from day to day, but we want to put it over
right. So don't hit the asphalt too hard tonight."

And in all justice to myself and my friendship to Tommy I really did not
intend to. What place was it that some one said is paved with good
intentions?

Leaving the Opera House we mixed with the laughing tide that flowed
along the Prado, and by the merest chance--destinies of nations, much
less our own, sometimes rest upon a merest chance--dropped in for supper
at a fashionable place patronized by those who wish to see the brightest
of Havana life. There were other places, of course, that might have
offered quite as much, but this one happened to be on the route we had
taken.

Midnight passed, but still we lingered, seated on the latticed balcony
that encircles an inner court where cabaret features are
held--suggestive of a bull ring. One rather piquant Spanish girl,
playing her accompaniment on a guitar, gazed softly up at Tommy while
singing about some wonderful Nirvana, an enchanted island that floated
in a sea of love. It was a pretty song, even if more intense than
temperate, and pleased with it he tossed her a coin; whereupon she
tilted her chin and raised a shoulder, asking in the universal language
of cabarets if she should not come up and drink a health with the
_imperioso Senor_. But he, whose heart was beating against a twenty-page
letter from a nymph in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, laughed a
negative, this time throwing her a flower that she kissed lightly and
put in her hair.

We had supped well, the mandolins were now tinkling, incessantly, and
this, mingled with the silvery tones of glasses touched in eager
pledges, created an ensemble of sounds dear to the heart of every true
Bohemian.