is what I love about
you," she cried suddenly, "your youth and freshness and courage. Tirso
Labrador dying so gallantly ... all your beardless intent faces. The
revolt in Cuba, I've felt it ever since I landed at Havana, it's in
the air like wine. I am sick of officers: look, ever since I was a
child the army has forced itself upon me. I had to have their
patronage when I was dancing and their company when I went to the
cafes; and when it wasn't the cavalry it was the gentlemen. They were
always superior, condescending; and always, inside me, I hated them.
They thought, because I was peasant born, that their attentions filled
me with joy, that I should be grateful for their aristocratic
presences. But, because I was what I was, I held them, with their
ladies' hands and sugared voices, in contempt. There isn't one of them
with the entrails to demand my love.

"I tell you I was smothering in the air about me. My dancing isn't
like the posturing of the court, it's the dancing of the people, my
people, passionate like a knife. I am from the Morena, and there we
are not the human sheep who live in the valleys, along the empty
rivers. How shall I explain? But how can you explain yourself? You are
not a Cuban; this rebellion, in which you may so easily be killed
almost before you begin to live, it isn't yours. What drew you into
it? You must make it plain, for I, too, am caught."

"Men are different from women," he replied, putting into words his
newly acquired wisdom; "whatever happened to me would be useless for
you, you couldn't be helped by it." Yet he was forced to admit to
himself that all she had said was reasonable; at bottom it didn't
contradict his generalization, for it was based on a reality, on La
Clavel's long resentment, on indignities to her pride, on, as she had
said, the innate freedom of the mountain spirit. If she were honest,
any possible attachment to Cuba might result from her hatred of
Spain, of Sevilla and Madrid. Hers, then, would be the motive of
revenge.

"You are right about the difference in our experiences," she
agreed; "I was dancing for a living at six; at ten I had another
accomplishment. I have lived in rooms inlaid with gold, and in cellars
with men where murder would have been a gracious virtue. Yes, lime
flower, there is little you know that could be any assistance to
me. But the other, your purity, your effort of nobility, that I must
learn from you."

He explained his meaning more