As Charles was considering this he was unceremoniously thrust aside for the passage of Captain Santacilla with another cavalry officer whose cinnamon colored face was stamped with sultry ill-humor. Santacilla addressed the dancer aggressively with the query of why she misspent her evening with the cursed Cuban negroes.
La Clavel made no reply, but tended her empty glass to Andrés; then she glanced indifferently at the captains. "Their manners," she said, "are very pretty; and as for the negro--" she shrugged her delectable shoulders.
"My blood is as pure, as Castilian, as your own," Tirso Labrador began hotly; but Remigio stilled him with a hand on his arm. In an uncolored voice he begged the dancer to excuse them; and, sweeping off their hats, they were leaving when Santacilla's companion stepped forward in a flash of ungoverned anger like an exposed knife:
"I've noticed you before," he addressed Tirso, "hanging and gabbling around the cafés and theatres, and it's my opinion you are an insurrectionist. If the truth were known, I dare say, it would be found you are a friend to Cespedes. Anyhow, I'm tired of looking at you; if you are not more retiring, you will find yourself in the Cabañas."
"Good evening," Remigio repeated in an even tone. With his hand still on Tirso's arm he tried to force him into the café; but the other, dark with passion, broke away.
"You have dishonored my father and the name of a heroic patriot," he said to the officer of cavalry. "In this I am alone." With a suspicious quickness he leaned forward and his big hands shut about the Spaniard's throat.
Charles, with a suppressed exclamation, recalled Tirso's determination to choke one of the enemies of Cuba. The man in the gripping fingers stiffened and then, grotesquely, lost his aspect of a human form; suddenly he was no more than a thing of limp flesh and gay fabrics. Instantly an uproar, a surging passionate excitement grew, at the heart of which Tirso Labrador was curiously still. Heaving bodies, at once closing in and prudently scattering, hid from Charles his friend. There was an onrush of gendarmes, harsh exclamations and oaths; then, at the flash of steel, a short agonized cry--Tirso's voice at once hoarse and inhuman with death.