The old Manuela had long been snoring. Some the officers had grown melancholy, the others were noisy only by fits and starts--Juanita's eyes closed.
"Let her go, she is tired," remarked an elderly captain.
"Before we part, I beg one especial favor," cried Prince B----. "That the Senorita give us each a kiss."
The dancer made a few gestures of dissent, because that was a part of her trade, and then yielded.
Patiently she let one after the other of the young men press his mustache, smelling of wine and smoke, upon her beautiful mouth. At length Felix's turn came, but he avoided her lips, profaned by the kisses of his comrades, and only kissed her hand very softly. Misunderstanding the tenderness of his action, she believed that he despised her kiss.
A few minutes later the two sleepy Spaniards rolled away to their home in a carriage which Prince B---- had paid for.
"A beautiful creature, but a perfect goose," remarked B---- to Felix, as he strolled back to the barracks with him. The other officers drove. "Besides, she is at least twenty-five or six years old; that is old for a Spaniard," chatted the Prince.
Felix walked silently beside him, a hot, unsatisfied feeling in his heart, a withered flower in his hand.
He cherished it like a lover the rose-bud which his dear one had given him; yes, thus would Felix cherish the faded yellow flower which the dust in the wings of the stage had soiled--upon which an acrobat might have trodden. He placed it in a glass of water, and finally pressed it in a book of poems.
Explain it who will! In the moment when Felix had avoided her lips, the narrow-minded Spaniard had taken a decided dislike for him, a dislike which more intimate acquaintance with him did not overcome, but which increased to aversion. Neither his unusual, truly somewhat effeminate, beauty, nor his reserved, chivalrous manners, pleased her. B----, with his bold, condescending ways, had more success with her, but her deepest, tenderest feelings were for the trapeze artist of the Orpheum, a young man with strongly developed muscles and bushy hair, who apparently seldom washed his face and never his hands; but, on the other hand, used the strongest-smelling pomade, and always wore the most brilliant cravats. One met him often when one visited Juanita.