Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminishing strains of its quickstep, Andres joined Charles and Pilar--who had left her quitrin--strolling through the Plaza. As usual she said practically nothing; but, in the gloom, she was specially potent, like a fascinating and ironic idol to innocence; and Charles Abbott was pleased by Andres' instant attention. Pilar was reluctant, now, to return to the carriage, and she lingered between the men, who, in turn, gazed down addressing remarks to the smooth blackness of her hair or to the immobile whiteness of her face. Charles dropped behind, to light a cigar, and when he came up to them again he had the illusive sense of a rapid speech stopped at his approach. Andres Escobar's countenance was lowered, his brow drawn together ... it had been Pilar de Lima, surprisingly, who had talked. Charles recalled the manner in which her low, even voice flowed from scarcely moving lips, with never a shadow of emotion, of animation, across her unstirred flattened features. Some Cubans gathered about the table when, later, they were eating ices; and, gaining Pilar's consent, he left with the indispensable polite regrets and bows. He was vaguely and thoroughly disturbed, uneasy, as though a grain of poison had entered him and were circulating through all his being. It was a condition he was unfamiliar with, disagreeable in the extreme; and one which he determined to stamp out. It hadn't existed in his contact with Pilar until the appearance of Andres; yes, it came about from the conjunction of the girl, Andres and himself; spilled into the clarity of their companionship, Andres and his, her influence had already darkened and slightly embittered it ... had affected it, Charles added; she was powerless to touch him in the future; he put her resolutely, completely, from his thoughts. He was a little appalled at the suddenness with which the poison had tainted him, infecting every quality of superiority, of detachment, of reasoning, he possessed. When he saw Andres again, after the interval of a week, his heart was empty of everything but crystal admiration, affection; but Andres was obscured, his bearing even defiant. They were at a reception given by a connection of the Cespedes on the Cerro. Instinctively they had drawn aside, behind a screen of pomegranate and mignonette trees in the patio; but their privacy, Charles felt, had been uncomfortably invaded. He spoke of this, gravely, and Andres suddenly drooped in extreme dejection. "Why did you ever bring us together!" he exclaimed. "She, Pilar, has fastened herself about me like one of those pale strangling orchids. No other woman alive could have troubled me, but, then, Pilar is not a woman." Charles Abbott explained his agreement with that.