cerned, of unrelieved vapidity.
He was supposed to be infatuated with the dancer; and he lingered,
not wholly sober, about the fashionable resorts. Charles sent her
flowers; and, sitting in his room on the roof of the San Felipe, he
composed, in a cold distaste, innumerable short variations on the
theme of a fluid and fatuous attachment. In reality, he had been
repelled by the actuality of La Clavel; he had an unconquerable
aversion for her room with its tumbled vivid finery, the powdered
scents mingling with the odors of her body and of the brandy always
standing in a glass beside her. Yet the discrepancy between the woman
herself and the vision she had bred continued to puzzle and disconcert
him.

When they were together it was this he preferred to talk about. At
times she answered his questioning with a like interest; but all,
practically, that she understood about herself, her dancing, had been
expressed in their first conversation upon that topic. The rest, at
best, was no more than a childlike curiosity and vanity. She had an
insatiable appetite for compliment; and, sincere in his admiration for
her impersonal aspect, Charles was content to gratify her; except
when, in spite of her promise, she kissed him ardently. This never
failed to seriously annoy him; and afterwards she would offer him a
mock apology. It detracted, he felt, from his dignity, assaulted,
insidiously, the elevation of his purpose in life.

He cherished a dislike, part cultivated and part subconscious, for
women. All his thoughts and emotions were celibate, chaste. Such a
scene had just ended, La Clavel was at her glass, busy with a rouge
pot and a scrap of soft leather; and Charles was standing stiffly by
the door. She had used, in describing him, a Spanish word about the
meaning of which he was not quite clear, but he had an idea that it
bore a close resemblance to prig. That specially upset him. At the
moment his dislike for her almost broke down his necessary diplomacy.
In an island of men desirous of her least favor--her fame transcended
seas and reached from coast to coast--he only, thinking less than
nothing of his privilege, had an instant unchallenged access to her.

He knew, carefully watched, all her various dependents: Calixto Sola,
the hairdresser, a creature with a sterile face constantly twisted
into painful grimaces; he was an employee in a barbering shop on
Neptune Street, too volatile for any convictions, but because of a
sp