in the slightest way with a national independence. It was
possible that she had been selected, thrown with him, for that very
purpose; but there his intelligence, he thought, his knowledge of
intrigue, had been underestimated, insulted. No--Pilar, de Vaca,
Spain, would gain nothing, and he would have a very pleasant, an oddly
stimulating and exciting, afternoon. The excitement came from her
extraordinary personality, an intensity tempered with a remoteness, an
indifference, which he specially enjoyed after the last few
tempestuous days. Being with her resembled floating in a barge on a
fabulous Celestial river between banks of high green bamboo. It had no
ulterior significance. She was positively inhuman.

He met her, with an impressive glittering carriage and rider,
according to her appointment, at the end of the Paseo Tacon, past the
heat of afternoon. She was accompanied by a duenna with rustling silk
on a tall gaunt frame, and a harsh countenance, the upper lip marred
by a bluish shadow, swathed in a heavy black mantilla. Pilar was
exactly the same as she had been the evening before. The diminished
but still bright day showed no flaw on the evenness of her pallor, the
artificial carmine of her lips was like the applied petals of a
geranium, her narrow sexless body was upright in its film of clear
white.

The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin,
Pilar settled lightly in the nina bonita, Charles mounted to the third
place, the calesero swung up on the horse outside the shafts, and they
rattled smartly into the Queen's Drive. From where he sat he could see
nothing but the sombre edge of the mantilla beside him and Pilar's
erect back, her long slim neck which gave her head, her densely
arranged hair, an appearance of too great weight. On either side the
fountains and glorietas, the files of close-planted laurel trees,
whirled behind them. The statue of Carlos III gave way to the Jardin
Botanico.

* * * * *

There he commanded the carriage to halt, and, in reply to Pilar's
surprise, explained that he was following the established course. "We
leave the quitrin here, and it meets us at the gates of the Quinta,
and meanwhile we walk. There are a great many paths and flowers." On
the ground she admitted her ignorance of Havana, and, followed at a
conventional distance by her companion, they entered the Gardens.
There was a warm perfumed steam of watered blossoming