ouths at her loose heels.

"You will be laughed at, of course; the officers, Santacilla and
Gaspar, will be unbearable. You will have to play the infatuated fool,
and send me bouquets of gardenias and three-cornered notes, and give
me money. That won't be so hard, because we can use the same sum over
and over; but I shall have to read the notes to my protectors in the
army."

"I'll be going," he repeated, gathering his stick and gloves from the
floor. She asked, with a breath of wistfulness, if he could manage a
touch of affection for her? Charles Abbott replied that this was not
the hour for such questions. "The young," she sighed, "are glacial."
But that, she proceeded, was exactly what drew her to them. They were
like the pure wind along the eaves under which she had been born. "I
promise never to kiss you again, or, if I must, solely as the mark of
brotherhood. And now go back to--to Andres."

She backed away from him, superb in the shawl, and again she was rayed
in the superlative beauty of her first appearance. The woman was lost
in the dancer, the flesh in the vision, the art.

"You could be a goddess," Charles told her, "the shrine of thousands
of hearts." The declaration of his entire secret was on his lips; but,
after all, it wasn't his. There was a possibility that she had lied
about Vincente, and at this second he might be dead, the Volunteers
waiting for him, Charles Abbott, below.

* * * * *

Hurrying through the Paseo Isabel to the Prado, Charles, looking at
his watch, found that it was nearly six. Carmita Escobar and Narcisa,
and probably Domingo, were driving perhaps by the sea or perhaps
toward Los Molinos, the park of the Captain-General. At any rate the
women would be away from the house, and that, in the situation which
faced the Escobars, was fortunate. If what La Clavel said were true,
and Charles Abbott now believed her implicitly, the agents of the
Crown would be already watching in the Prado. Vincente must be
smuggled away; how, he didn't yet see; but a consultation would result
in a plan for his escape. The servant who opened the small door in the
great iron-studded double gate, though he knew Charles Abbott well,
was uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. He refused to say who of
the family were at home; he intimated that, in any case, Charles would
not be seen, and he attempted to close him out.

Charles, however, ignoring the other's protests, force