rangements, and he went on into a high cool corridor set
with a marble flooring. At the office he exchanged his passport for a
solemn printed warning and interminable succession of directions; and
then, climbing an impressive stair, he was ushered into a room where
the ceiling was so far above him that once more he was overcome by
strangeness and surprise.

He unpacked slowly, with a gratifying sense of the mature significance
of his every gesture; and, in the stone tub hidden by a curtain in a
corner, had a refreshing bath. There was a single window rising from
the tiled floor eight or ten feet, and he opened double shutters,
discovering a shallow iron-railed balcony. Before him was a squat
yellow building with a wide complicated facade; it reached back for a
square, and Charles decided that it was the Tacon Theatre. On the
left was the Parque de Isabel, with its grass plots and gravel walks,
its trees and iron settees, gathered about the statue of Isabel II.

Charles Abbott's confidence left him little by little; what had seemed
so easy in New York, so apparent, was uncertain with Havana about him.
The careless insolence of the inspectors with the green-tasseled canes
at once filled him with indignation and depression. How was he to
begin his mission? Without a word of Spanish he couldn't even make it
known. There was Andres Escobar to consider: his father had told
Charles that he knew a few words of English. Meanwhile, hungry, he
went down to the eleven o'clock breakfast.

* * * * *

A ceremonious head waiter led him to a small table by a long window on
the Parque, where, gazing hastily at the breakfasts around him, he
managed, with the assistance of his waiter's limited English, to
repeat their principal features. These were fruit and salads, coffee
flavored with salt, and French bread. Clear white curtains swung at
the window in a barely perceptible current of air, and he had glimpses
of the expanse without, now veiled and now intolerably brilliant. His
dissatisfaction, doubts, vanished in an extraordinary sense of
well-being, or settled importance and elegance. There were many people
in the dining-room, it was filled with the unfamiliar sound of
Spanish; the men, dark, bearded and brilliant-eyed, in white linens,
with their excitable hands, specially engaged his attention, for it
was to them he was addressed.

The women he glanced over with a detached and indulgent manner: they