"I left the knife out of my present toilet," she sighed. "It would be a charity to free you from the shape you hate so dearly."
"I must go back to the San Felipe and write what you told me," he proceeded. "I understand that Santacilla has gone out on a slaughtering party, and I'll have to take you around in the evening. There are zarzuelas in the Tacon Theatre this evening, and afterwards, I suppose, dulces upstairs at the Tuileries. It's no good, though, expecting me for Retreta--I've got to have some time to recover and sleep: four o'clock last night, with a pack of imbeciles, and three the night before. The smell of Jamaica rum and limes makes me sick."
The mass was over, the people scattering, and, once more cheerful, she laughed at him. "You might wear a hair shirt," she suggested; "they are splendid for the soul." He handed her, without reply, into the small victoria, one of the first in Havana, which had taken the place of her volanta. In the sun, her shawl, her smile, were dazzling. A knot of men gathered, gazing at her with longing, regarding Charles Abbott with insolent resentment and wonder; how, their expressions made clear the thought, could that insignificant and colorless foreigner, that tepid American, engage and hold La Clavel, the glory of Cuba and Spain?
She drove away, shielding her eyes with the fan, and Charles returned slowly, on foot, to the hotel, reaching it in time for the eleven o'clock breakfast. Bolting his door, closing the high shutters of his glassless window, he lay down tired and feverish. The vendors of oranges cried, far off, their naranjes, naranjes dulces. The bed, which had no mattress, its sacking covered by a single sheet, the pillow stuffed hard with cotton, offered him little rest. His body, wet with sweat, twisted and turned continually, and sleep evaded him; its peace almost within his grasp, it fled before the hot insistence of his thoughts. The uncomfortable flesh mocked and dragged at the spirit. It occurred to him suddenly, devastatingly, that he might fail in his purpose; the armor of his conviction of invincibility fell from him with the semblance of a loud ringing.
Of all the disturbing elements in Charles Abbott's present life the one which, it had seemed, must prove most difficult, Santacilla and his friends, troubled him least. There was, in their jeering, a positive quality to be met; his own necessary restraint furnished him with a sustaining feeling of triumph, stability; in his control, the sacrifice of his dignity, his actual pride, damaged by La Clavel, was restored. He acted the part of the infatuated, ubiquitous youth, he thought, with entire success. It had been hardest at first--Santacilla, who pretended to find Charles under his feet like a dog, threatened, if he didn't stay away from the St. Louis, to fling him down the long flight of stairs descending from the dancer's room.