bad. You are wrapped up in this liberty, and that is very well for
you, an ordinary person. You must have something like that, outside
you, to follow, for you've very little within. But me, I am not an
ordinary person; I am La Clavel. I am more valuable to the world than
pumpkins or republics. I stamp my heel," she stamped her heel, a clear
sharp sound, and her body swept into a line passionate and tense, "and
I create a people, a history." La Clavel secured the castanets lying
on her dressing-table--in answer to their irritable rhythmic clinking
she projected, for an instant, a vision of all desire.

"I can make men forget; I can draw them out of their sorrows and away
from their homes; I can put fever in their blood that will blind them
to memories and duty. Or I can be a drum, and lead them out, without a
regret, a fear, to death. That is more than a naranjada or a cigar or
an election. And, because of what I have given you, I have put that
out of my life; I have been living like the mistress of a bodega. To
be clear, Charles, I am tired of you and Cuba, and I have satisfied my
hatred of the officers with cologne on their handkerchiefs."

"I understand that perfectly," Charles Abbott assured her; "and I
cannot beg you to stay. Whatever your motive was, your value to us has
been beyond any payment. If our movement had a saint, you would fill
that place."

She laughed, "A strange saint in a manton and slippers with painted
heels."

"Much better," Charles replied, "than many of those in sanctified
robes. I had the feeling, too," he proceeded, "that our usefulness
together was coming to an end." It seemed to him that again she had
become the glorified figure of the stage, his dislike for her
actuality, her flesh, vanished, leaving only profound admiration.

"I am amazed," she said, in a lingering half humorous resentment,
"that you never loved me, I never brought you a regret or a longing or
made any trouble in your heart."

"That was because I put you so high," he explained. She raised her
shoulders and objected that it was late for compliments.

"Be honest--you didn't care for me. You ought to be very successful,
you have things surprising in the so young. Will you," she demanded
suddenly, totally changing the subject, "be my maid?" He hastened to
inform her, vehemently, that he would not. "Jobaba hasn't come today,"
La Clavel continued; "and she wasn't here to dress me for dinner last
evening. That is unusual