Midnight
What place was it that some one said is paved with good intentions ? Leaving the Opera House we mixed with the laughing tide that flowed along the Prado , and by the merest chance -- destinies of nations , much less our own , sometimes rest upon a merest chance -- dropped in for supper at a fashionable place patronized by those who wish to see the brightest of Havana life . There were other places , of course , that might have offered quite as much , but this one happened to be on the route we had taken . Midnight passed , but still we lingered , seated on the latticed balcony that encircles an inner court where cabaret features are held -- suggestive of a bull ring . One rather piquant Spanish girl , playing her accompaniment on a guitar , gazed softly up at Tommy while singing about some wonderful Nirvana , an enchanted island that floated in a sea of love . It was a pretty song , even if more intense than temperate , and pleased with it he tossed her a coin ; whereupon she tilted her chin and raised a shoulder , asking in the universal language of cabarets if she should not come up and drink a health with the _ imperioso Señor _ . But he , whose heart was beating against a twenty-page letter from a nymph in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky , laughed a negative , this time throwing her a flower that she kissed lightly and put in her hair .