Later, he discovered that, within the scope of his possible knowledge, his conjecture had been right: a danzon, a native Cuban ball--not, the director of the Inglaterra gave him to understand, entirely respectable--had been held in the Opera House. “But there won't be another until after we leave,” Lee reassured Savina; “they are rather rare except at carnival.” She shuddered. It was evident that the distressing effect on her of the music lingered through the day; her energy gave way to a passive contentment hardly removed from listlessness. They drove, at the end of afternoon, on the Malecon, following the curving sea wall from La Punta to the scattered villas of Vedado. The sea and sky were grey; or was it blue? At the horizon they met without a perceptible change; the water became the air, the air water, with a transition as gradual as the edge of dusk. The tropical evening was accomplished rapidly, as dramatically as the uprush of the sun: they were gazing into the distance over a tide like a smooth undulating mist ... and there were lights crowning the Cabanas fortress; the passing cars made the familiar geometrical patterns with the cold bars of their lamps; they were wrapped in darkness; night had come. Savina didn't want to go back to the hotel, their room; and, after dinner at the Paris, they went to Carmelo, where they alternated northern dances with the stridor of a northern cabaret and drinks. Savina's spirits revived slowly. To Lee she seemed to have changed in appearance since she left New York--here, losing her air of a constant reserve, she looked younger, daring. Her sharp grace, exposed in the films of summer dress, had an aspect of belonging, rather than to the character she had deserted, to a woman at once conscious of its effect and not unwilling to have it measured by the appraising gaze of the masculine public. In a way, without losing her distinction, she had become evident; another woman, one less admirably balanced, would have been conspicuous. Havana was like a, stage on which Savina--with a considered bravado they had kept the Randon--tried with intoxicating success a part she had long and secretly desired. * * * * *