ng smile;
"but let me advise you not to smoke that cigar. I have a peculiarly
sensitive nose for tobacco, and my nose informs me that your cigar,
though good as cigars go, is not fit for you to smoke."

The young officer was surprised that he was rather charmed than offended
by this impertinence.

"Let me offer you one of these instead," said the strange gentleman; "we
call them--I won't trouble you with the Spanish name--but in English it
means 'Joys of Spain.'"

The officer took and thanked him for a "Joy of Spain," and found the
flavour and aroma so excellent that, to use his own phrase, he could
have eaten it. He asked the stranger what in particular was his
objection to the other cigar.

"This objection," said he, "which is common to all ill-prepared
tobaccos, that it lowers the vital force. You don't feel that yet,
because you are young and healthy, and gifted with a superabundance of
fine vitality; but you may by smoking one bad cigar bring the time a day
nearer when you must feel it. And even now it would take a little off
the keen edge of the appetite for pleasure. How little," said he, "do we
understand how to keep ourselves in condition for the complete enjoyment
of life! You, I suppose, are about to take your pleasure in town, and
instead of judiciously tickling and stimulating your nerves for the
complete fulfilment of the pleasures you contemplate, you begin--you
were beginning, I mean, with your own cigar--to dull and stupefy them.
Don't you see how foolish that is?"

The young officer admitted that it was very foolish and very true; and
they talked on thus, the elder exercising a charm over the younger such
as he had never known before in the society of any man. In a quarter of
an hour the young man felt as if he had known and trusted and loved his
neighbour all his life; he felt, he confessed, so strongly attracted
that he could have hugged him. He told him about his family, and showed
him the innermost secrets of his heart; and all the while he smoked the
delicious "Joy of Spain," and felt more and more enthralled and
fascinated by the stranger's eyes, which, as he talked, lightened and
glowed more and more as their glance played caressingly about him. He
was beginning to wonder at that, when with some emphatic phrase the
stranger laid his fingers on his knee, upon which a thrill shot through
him as if a woman had touched him. He looked in the stranger's face, and
the wonderful eyes seemed to sea