rn me that I must have nothing to do with
disaffected Cubans; the Cubans, when I reach out my arms to them, are
only polite.

"Certainly I know that there has been a rebellion; but it is stamped
out, ended, now; there are no signs of it in Havana, when I dance the
jota; so why isn't everyone sensible and social; why, if they are
victorious, are not Gaspar Arco de Vaca and Ceaza y Santacilla easier?
If, as it must be, Cuba is subjected, why doesn't it ignore the
unpleasant and take what the days and nights always offer? There can
be no longer, so late in the history of the world, a need for the old
Inquisition, the stabbers Philip commanded."

Charles Abbott had an impulse to reply that, far from being conquered,
the spirit of liberty in Cuba was higher than ever before; he wanted
to tell her, to cry out, that it was deathless; and that no horrors of
the black past were more appalling than those practiced now by the
Spanish soldiery. Instead of this he watched a curl of smoke mount
through the height of the room to a small square window far up on the
wall where it was struck gold by a shaft of sunlight.

"He was particularly a friend of yours?" she insisted, returning to
Tirso. "You were always together, watching me dance from your box in
the Tacon Theatre, and eating ices at the El Louvre or at the
Tuileries."

He spoke slowly, indifferently, keeping his gaze elevated toward the
ceiling. "Tirso Labrador was a braggard, he was always boasting about
what he could do with his foolish muscles. What happened to him was
unavoidable. We weren't sorry--a thorough bully. As for the others,
that dandy, Quintara, and Remigio Florez, who looks like a coffee
berry from their plantation at Vuelta Arriba, and Escobar, I am very
much in their debt--I bring the gold and they provide the pleasures of
Havana. They are my runners. I haven't the slightest interest in their
politics; if they support the Revolution or Madrid, they keep all that
out of my knowledge."

A prolonged silence followed, a period devoted to the two cigars.
"That Escobar," La Clavel said, "is a very beautiful boy. What you
tell me is surprising; he, at any rate, seems quite different. And I
have seen you time after time sitting together, the two or three or
four of you, with affectionate glances and arms. I am sensitive to
such things, and I think you are lying."

An air of amused surprise appeared on his countenance, "If you are so
taken with Andres Escobar,"