upposed to
know all about these dark affairs. Isn't it understood that the women
keep to their own men? And that Cuban, Abbott, you know him; we often
used to see you with him!"

"Yes," Charles Abbott acknowledged, "partners seldom leave each other.
That is Andres Escobar."

He paid no more heed to the voices about him, but sat with his gaze,
his hopes and fears, fastened on Andres and Pilar. Back again, she
was, as usual, silent, dragging her fingers through the knotted
magenta fringe of the shawl. Andres, though, was speaking in short
tense phrases that alternated with concentrated angry pauses. She
lifted her arms to him, and they began to dance. They remained,
however, characteristic of the danzon, where they were, turning slowly
and reversing in a remarkably small space. They were a notably
graceful couple, and they varied, with an intricate stepping, the
general monotony of the measure.

Charles had an insane impulse to call down to Andres, to attract his
attention, and to wave him away from the inimical forces gathering
about him. Instead of this he lighted a cigarette, with hands the
reverse of steady, and concentrated all his thoughts upon the fact of
Cuban independence. That, he told himself, was the only thing of
importance in his life, in the world. And it wasn't Cuba--alone, but
the freedom of life at large, that rested, in part at least, on the
foundation he might help to lay, the beginning solidity of human
liberty, superiority. He forced himself to gaze with an air of
indifference at the dancing below him; but, it seemed, wherever he
looked, the manton floated into his vision. He saw, now, nothing else,
neither Pilar nor Andres, but only the savage challenging fire of
silks. The shawl's old familiar significance had been entirely
lost--here he hated and feared it, it was synonymous with all that
threatened his success. It gathered into its folded and draped square
the evil of the danzon, the spoiled mustiness of joined and debased
bloods, the license under a grotesque similitude of restraint.

This was obliterated by a wave of affection for Andres so strong that
it had the effect of an intolerable physical pressure within his body:
his love had the aspect of a tangible power bound to assert itself or
to destroy him. With clenched hands he fought it back, he drove it
away before the memory of the other. Voices addressed him, but he paid
no attention, the words were mere sounds from a casual sphere wi