"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.
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