the horses? At heart,
it's no doubt, she is Spanish, and yet.... There's the procession."

The key bearer, splendid in velvet and gold and silver, with a short
cloak, rode into the ring followed by the picadores on broken-down
horses: their legs were swathed in leather and their jackets, of ruby
and orange and emerald, were set with expensive lace. They carried
pikes with iron points; while the banderilleros, on foot, with hair
long and knotted like a woman's, hung their bright cloaks over an arm
and bore the darts gay with paper rosettes.

The espada, Jose Ponce, was greeted with a savage roar of approbation;
he was dressed in green velvet, his zouave jacket heavy with gold
bullion; and his lithe slender dark grace recalled to Charles Abbott
La Clavel. Charles paid little attention to the bull fighting, for he
was far in the sky of his altruism; his presence at the Plaza de Toros
was merely mechanical, the routine of his life in Havana. Across from
him the banked humanity in the cheaper seats a sol, exposed to the
full blaze of mid-afternoon, made a pattern without individual
significance; he heard the quick bells of the mules that dragged out
the dead bulls; a thick revolting odor rose from the hot sand soaked
with the blood and entrails of horses.

At times, half turning, he saw the brilliant shawl of the dancer, and
more than once he distinguished her voice in the applause following a
specially skilful or daring pass. He thought of her with a passionate
admiration unaffected by the realization that she had brought them the
worst of luck: perhaps any touch of Spain was corrupting, fatal. And
the sudden desire seized him to talk to La Clavel and make sure that
her superb art was unshadowed by the disturbing possibilities voiced
by Andres.

There were cries of fuego! fuego! and Charles Abbott was conscious of
a bull who had proved indifferent to sport. A banderillero, fluttering
his cloak, stepped forward and planted in the beast's shoulder a dart
that exploded loudly with a spurt of flame and smoke; there was a
smothered bellow, and renewed activities went forward below. "What a
rotten show!" Charles said to Andres, and the latter accused him of
being a tender sentimentalist. Jose Ponce, Andres pronounced with
satisfaction, was a great sword. The espada was about to kill: he
moved as gracefully as though he were in the figure of a dance; his
thrust, as direct as a flash of lightning, went up to the hilt, and
the