“One hour from now I must go to the woman’s house to pick up the letter,” she whispered, with an agitated glance at the door. “Please go to the bohío where you take your baths. I have something to tell you. Now, go sit with your friends and don’t speak to me.”

Slipping in the mud of the afternoon’s rain, Will walked to the bohío with the feeling that he was no longer in possession of himself, nor in command of events. The sensation reminded him of the moment when Double Eagle lost her rudder, and he and Drew found themselves piloting a piece of driftwood, helpless in the waves and currents. There was one big difference, though: The powerlessness he felt now thrilled as it frightened, and to the romance of that delightful terror, the glamour of intrigue had been added. Tomorrow’s departure would have the elements of an elopement, or an abduction, although he could not say for sure who was being abducted, Elvira or him. If he married her, he would be turning his back on his family, his friends, and the whole world he had known. Banned in Boston, he thought, with silent laughter. Yes, Elvira Terhune would be banned in Boston, and probably in New York and Chicago and Philadelphia as well, certainly in any city in the South, with the possible exception of New Orleans. Maybe they could live there one day; if not, then he would have no choice but to remain in Havana. He had a dim awareness that closing off his avenues of retreat had something to do with his desire for her, that her magnetism was seated as much in her taboo as in her beauty. If Willard Terhune had been older and more experienced, he might have summoned this foggy perception into the full light of his consciousness and questioned the authenticity and purity of his passion. He might have seen that what he sought from this alluring and exotic bird was not her heart but her wings, to bear him aloft in flight from the ordinary. He might have paused to ask himself what it would be like to live with her day after day, in a self-imposed exile, and what would happen to his passion once the extraordinary became ordinary, the exotic familiar, and all the abrasive cares and vexations of wedded life, which are as universal as love itself, began to wear on his idyll.

The bohío’s door was closed. It was very dark inside, except for a leaning pillar of moonlight that fell through a vent between the roof and one of the peaked side walls. He heard Elvira ask, in a tense whisper, if it was he. He answered that it was, and with a low laugh, said he could not see her.

“Shhhhh!” she scolded. “Ven aquí, Will.”