ver lost an opportunity to say how worn you were with La Clavel."

"No, Andres, it isn't a token of love, but a banner, yours even more
than mine, a charge we must keep above the earth."

That, Andres observed satirically, was very pretty; but a manton, a
woman's thing, had no relation to the cause of Cuban independence.

"Perhaps, but of course, you are right," Charles agreed. "Very well,
then it is only a superstition of mine. I have the feeling that if we
lower this--this standard it will bring us bad luck, it will be
disastrous. What that Pilar, you may think, is to you, the manton has
always been for me. It is in my blood; I regard it as a sailor might a
chart. And then, Andres, remember--it protected Cuba."

"I have to have it," the other whispered desperately; "she--she wants
it, for the danzon."

Charles Abbott's resentment changed to pity, and then to a calm
acceptance of what had the aspect of undeviating fate. "Very well," he
said quietly. "After all, you are right, it is nothing but a shawl,
and our love for each other must not suffer. I'll give it to you
freely, Andres: she will look wonderful in it."

The other grasped his hands. "Be patient, Charles," he begged. "This
will go and leave us as we were before, as we shall always be. It
hasn't touched what you know of, it is absolutely aside from that--a
little scene in front of the curtain between the acts of the serious,
the main, piece. I doubted her honesty, as you described it, at first;
but you were right. She has no interest at all in our small struggle;
she is only anxious to return to Peru."

"I wish she had never come from there!" Charles declared; "whether she
is honest or dishonest is unimportant. She is spoiled, like a bad
lime."

"If you had been more successful with her--" Andres paused significantly.

"So that," Charles returned, "is what she said or hinted to you!"
Andres Escobar was gazing away into the massed and odorous grey-blue
mignonette. "Go away before I get angry with you; you are more
Spanish than any Mendoza. The manton you'll find at home tonight."

He was, frankly, worried about Andres; not fundamentally--Andres'
loyalty was beyond any personal betrayal--but because he was aware of
the essential inflammability of all tropical emotion. The other might
get into a rage with Pilar, who never, herself, could fall into such
an error, and pay the penalty exacted by a swift gesture toward the
hem of her skirt. Then he recalled