"Cartagena would be our port. There's a railroad, I believe, to Calamar. Then up the Magdalena by some kind of a steamboat to Giradot. Then get to Bogotá as best we might. There's an interesting life there, eight thousand feet above the sea, with schools and letters, and governments in and governments out, and cool mountain water running downwards through the city, and the houses built low because of the earthquakes. Let us go up the Magdalena and across to Bogotá, Gipsy!"
He sat in the wheel-chair he had himself designed, a wonderfully light and graceful affair,—considering,—with wonderful places alongside and beneath for wonderful things. His crutches were there, slung alongside, ready to his hand, and wicker detachable receptacles for writing-things and sketching-block and pencils and the book he was reading and so forth. Where he travelled now, the wheel-chair must travel. He was good with crutches for a hundred paces or two; then he must sit down and gather force for the next hundred. He suffered at times—not at all constantly—a good deal of pain. But with all of this understood, he yet looked a vigorous person,—fresh, hale, well-favoured, with not a grey hair,—a young man still.
"Bogotá," he said, "An archiepiscopal see—universities, libraries, and a botanic garden. Shut-in and in-growing meridional culture, tempered by revolutions. By all means let us go to Bogotá, Gipsy!"
Hagar smiled, sat without speaking, waiting, her eyes upon Thomson putting the last touches to the table, and Mahomet thrusting long-stemmed irises into the vases, the faces of both discreetly masking whatever interest they might feel in the proposed itinerary.
When, after another minute or two, they were gone from the room, "Were you waiting for them to go? Why, who keeps anything from Thomson? He knows my innermost soul. I told him this morning I was thinking of South America."
Hagar rose, and with her hands behind her head, began slowly to pace the large room. "Bogotá qua Bogotá is all right. You've the surest instinct, of course, when it comes to matching your mood with your place. You're a marvel there, as you are in so many ways, father! And Thomson and Mahomet would like it, too, I think."
"Do you mean that you won't like it?"
"No. I should like it very much. But I am not going, father."
Medway made an impatient movement, "We have had this before—"
"Yes, but not so determinedly.... Why not agree that the battle is over? It is over."