“Why, those ladies ... they didn’t seem quite the type you’d expect to see here, did they?”
“Oh, there’s every type here,” she replied lightly. She turned her eyes away from Harboro. There was something in his face which troubled her. She could not bear to see him with that expression of wounded sensibilities and rebellious pride in his eyes. And she had understood everything.
She did not break in upon his thoughts soon. She would have liked to divert his mind, but she felt like a culprit who realizes that words are often betrayers.
And so they walked in silence up that narrow bit of street which connects the bridge with Piedras Negras, and leads you under the balcony of what used to be the American Consul’s house, and on past the cuartel, where the imprisoned soldiers are kept. Here, of course, the street broadens and skirts the plaza where the band plays of an evening, and where the town promenades round and round the little square of palms and fountains, under the stars. You may remember that a little farther on, on one side of the plaza, there is the immense church which has been building for a century, more or less, and which is still incomplete.
There were a few miserable-looking soldiers, with shapeless, colorless uniforms, loitering in front of the cuartel as Harboro and Sylvia passed.
The indefinably sinister character of the building affected Sylvia. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s where the republic keeps a body of its soldiers,” explained Harboro. “They’re inside—locked up.”
They were both glad to sit down on one of the plaza benches for a few minutes; they did so by a common impulse, without speaking.
“It’s the first time I ever thought of prisoners having what you’d call an honorable profession,” Sylvia said slowly. She gazed at the immense, low structure with troubled eyes. Flags fluttered from the ramparts at intervals, but they seemed oddly lacking in gallantry or vitality.
“It’s a barbarous custom,” said Harboro shortly. He was still thinking of that incident on the bridge.