“I should like one of those,” she said, indicating a floating flower.
“It’s too far out,” he responded, and she turned her slow scrutiny upon him. Her eyes were neither blue nor gray but green, the green of a stone.
“That you are agreeable is more important than you know,” she said deliberately. “And de Vaca—” she conveyed a sense of disdain. “What is it that he wants so much from you? How can it, on this little island, a place with only two cities, be important? I must tell you that I 188 am not cheap; and when I was brought here, to see a boy, it annoyed me. But I am annoyed no longer,” her wet fingers swiftly left their prints on his cheek. “Oporto and the English Court—I understood that; but to dig secrets from you, an innocent young American,” she relapsed into silence as though he, the subject she had introduced, were insufficient to excuse the clatter of speech. So far as he was concerned, he replied, he had no idea of her meaning.
“You see,” he went on more volubly, “I was, to some extent, connected with the death of Santacilla, an officer of the regiment of Isabel, and they may still be looking for information about that.”
She assured him he was wrong. “It is Cuba that troubles them. It’s in their heads you are close to powerful families here and in North America, and that you are bringing them together, pouring Northern gold into the empty pockets of the Revolution. I saw at once, before I met you, that I should waste my time, and I was going away at once ... until you walked into the restaurant. Now it will amuse me, and I shall take the doblons I get and buy you a present, a ruby, and, when you see Captain de Vaca, you will wear it and smile and he will know nothing.”
“You mustn’t buy me anything,” Charles protested earnestly; “I can at least understand that, how generous you are. If you are unfamiliar with Cuba perhaps you will let me inform you. I came to Havana, you see, for my lungs. They were bad, and now they are good; and that is my history here. There is no hole in them because I have been careful to avoid the troubles on the street; and the way to miss them is not to give them an admission. The reason I am here with you is because you seemed to me, in yourself, so far away from all that. Your mind might be in China.” He went on to make clear to her his distrust of women. “But you are different; you are like a statue that has come to life, a very lovely statue. What you really are doesn’t matter, I don’t care, I shall never know. But a water lily—that is enough.”
“Are you wise or no deeper than this?” she asked, indicating the shallow fountain. “But don’t answer; how, as you say, can it affect us? You are you and I am I. We might even love each other with no more; that would be best—it is the more that spoils love.”
“What do you know about that?”
But, relapsing into immobility, she ignored his question. Beyond doubt his interest in her had 190 increased; it was an attraction without name, yet none the less potent. Seated close beside him she still seemed to be fashioned from a vital material other than flesh and blood; she was like a creation of sheer magic ... for what end? They rose, leaving the Botanical Gardens, the spotted orchids and air plants and oleanders, for the Quinta. There they passed into a walk completely arched over with the bushes of the Mar Pacifico, the rose of the Pacific, a verdurous tunnel of leaves and broad fragrant pink blooms, with a farther glimpse of a cascade over mossy rocks.