"I don't know about a woman giving a man ideas," he blurted out, with disapproval tingeing his tones.
"Read the life of Simon Bolivar," returned the general, easily, still caressing the source of his own inspiration. "In the 'Diario de Bucaramanga,' by de la Croix, we learn that Bolivar was unable to plan any of the great battles which freed the South American continent except when he was dancing with a woman. Every night, during his military campaigns, he danced till one or two o'clock, planning his next great stroke at Spain. That is what genius is, Señor Strawbridge—the ability to draw on outside sources of power. The women with whom Bolivar danced—what were they? Batteries. Bolivar was the motor. They furnished him the energy to lift this whole continent from tyranny to the untrammeled freedom enjoyed in Rio Negro to-day."
The general paused a moment and continued:
"Take me and Madruja. Out of the wealth of this woman's muliebrity, I will extend the state of Rio Negro from the Andes to the sea. She and I will build up great cities; gardenize the llanos; develop a people with the finesse of the French, the energy of the Americans, and the immensitude of the Spanish!" He pressed the girl to him passionately, moved with the magnificence of his vision, then put her beside him again and came down to a more normal mood by taking her hand once more and spreading it in his own.
This last ebullition was more than Strawbridge could tolerate. If all this had been expounded over Dolores Fombombo, had Dolores been alternately crushed and caressed, the drummer would have thought the relations between the President and his wife the most beautiful he had ever known. But the fact that Fombombo had shifted women rendered it outrageous. Strawbridge had to speak for the wife.
"Look here," he criticized. "That's all right. You seem to get a lot of pep out of this young lady, but look here—" at this point Mr. Strawbridge made one of those moral pauses which Americans inherit from their Sunday-school teachers—"had you thought of your wife?"
"Had I thought of my wife?"
"Yes; had you?"
"What is there to think of my wife?"