"How are you interested?" Andrés asked, "in ... girls? I know some very nice ones."
"Not in the least," Charles Abbott replied decidedly; "the only thing I care for is politics and the cause of justice and freedom."
Andrés Escobar gazed swiftly at the occupied tables around them; not far away there was a party of Spanish officers in loose short tunics and blue trousers. Then, without commenting on Charles' assertion, he drank from his glass of punch. "Some very nice girls," he repeated. Charles was overwhelmed with chagrin at his indiscretion; Andrés would think that he was a babbling idiot. At the same time he was slightly impatient: his faith in the dangers of Havana had been shaken by the city's aspect of profound placidity, its air of unalloyed pleasure. "You should know my friends," Andrés went on conversationally; "Remigio Florez, they are great coffee planters, and Jaime--Jaime Quintara--and Tirso Labrador. They will welcome you, as I."
Charles explained his intention of learning Spanish, of fencing; and the other promised his unreserved assistance. He would have a teacher of languages sent to the hotel and himself take Charles to the Fencing School. "Tomorrow," he promised. The drinks were finished, the cigars consumed in long ashes, and Andrés Escobar rose to go. As they walked toward the Paseo the Cuban said, "You must be very careful, liberty is a dangerous word; it is discussed only in private; in our tertulia you may speak." He held out a straight forward palm. "We shall be friends."
Again in his room, Charles dwelt on Andrés, conscious of the birth of a great liking, the friendship the other had put into words. He wanted to be like Andrés, as slender and graceful, with his hair in a peak and a worldly, contained manner. Charles was thin, rather than slender, more awkward than not; decidedly fragile in appearance. And his experience of life had been less than nothing. Yet he would make up for this lack by the fervor of his attachment to the cause of Cuba. He recalled all the stories he knew of foreign soldiers heroic in an adopted cause; that was an even more ideal form of service than the natural attachment to a land of birth.
He moved a chair out on his balcony, and sat above the extended irregular roof of the Tacon Theatre, watching the dusk flood the white marble ways. The lengthening shadows of the Parque blurred, joined in one; the façades were golden and then dimly violet; the Gate of Montserrat lost its boldness of outline. Cries rose from the streets, "Cuidado! Cuidado!" and "Narranjas, narranjas dulces." The evening news sheets were called in long falling inflections.