ey
worshipped her severally and together, discussing to the last shading
her every characteristic. She was young, but already the greatest
dancer the world had--would ever have, Charles added. And Andres was
instructed to secure the box for her every appearance in Havana; they
must learn, they decided, if she were to dance in Santiago de Cuba,
in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, in Cathay. They, if it were
mortally possible, would be present. Meanwhile none of them was to
take advantage of the others in the contingency that she should
miraculously come to love him. That incredible happiness the
individual must sacrifice to his friendship, to his oath above all
other oaths--Cuba. The country's name was not spoken, but it was
entirely understood.

They were seated on the lower floor, by the stairs which led up to the
salon for women; and, sharply, Charles grasped Andres' arm. Passing
them was a slender woman muffled in a black silk capote, with no hat
to cover the intricate mass of her hair piled against a high comb.
Behind her strode a Spanish officer of cavalry, his burnished scabbard
hooked on his belt against its silver chain; short, with a thick
sanguine neck above the band of his tunic, he had morose pale blue
eyes and the red hair of compounded but distinct bloods.

"La Clavel," Charles whispered; "and it must be that filthy captain,
Santacilla, with her."

* * * * *

Seated on the roof of the Hotel San Felipe, the night's trade wind
faintly vibrant with steel strings, Charles Abbott thought at length
about La Clavel. Two weeks had passed since she first danced at the
Tacon Theatre; she had appeared on the stage three times afterward;
and she was a great success, a prodigious favorite, in Havana. Charles
and Andres, Jaime and Remigio and Tirso Labrador, had, frankly, become
infatuated with her; and it was this feeling which Charles, at
present, was examining. If it endangered the other, his dedication to
an ordeal of right, he had decided, he must resolutely put the dancer
wholly outside his consideration.

This, he hoped, would not be necessary: his feeling for La Clavel lay
in the realm of the impersonal. It was, in fact, parallel with the
other supreme cause. La Clavel was a glittering thing of beauty, the
perfection of all that in a happier world, an Elysium--life and
romance might be. He regarded her in a mood of decided melancholy as
something greatly desirable and neve