Chapter III

The toypond near the east driveway floated many miniature boats that Saturday afternoon in May. The golden-crested synagogue on the Avenue, a phallic emblem for the eyes of the initiated, stood massive, erect, well within view. Pretty children played sailors; at intervals their exigent nurses rescued them from a watery grave. The girl, straight to virginal primness, swinging a scarlet parasol, went on slow gliding feet around the basin. In her jade-colored eyes there was the sweet faint passion of a June morning; she evoked June rather than May, a late, not an early spring-tide. She was in gold and black and wore a wide-brimmed hat of black straw. Her eyes were not large, nor yet luminous; smothered fire would have been the verdict of a portraitist. Jewelled eyes, they were, but jewels that had the muffled radiance of a topaz. Introspective her glance, sympathetic and not without a nuance of melancholy. A young thing not over eighteen, tender but suspicious, proud and dependent on those she loved, Mona went into the park every day to escape the oppressive happiness of her home. She lived with her parents. Her brother was away ten months during the year at college. She had not many friends of her age and sex because she was the companion of her father and mother. She adored them. They were adorable; the mother like an old English painting of the eighteenth century; the father, a scholar, a futile fumbler in the misty mid-region of metaphysic; but as gentle as a gentle woman, for all women are not so. At times Mona fled, so deep was her love for them. She stood in the clear soft afternoon light, more brune than blonde, yet suggesting not twilight but dawn. Her Celtic name modulated with her character--a character, fluid, receptive, sceptical, above all, pagan in its worship of sun, moon, stars, and fair tempting nature. Her tiny beaked nose sniffed the candid air crammed with May odors. She was happy. Not a masculine shadow had projected itself across the snowy field of her virgin soul.

"By Jove! that's an interesting girl, I'll wager!" exclaimed Ulick Invern to his companion, who replied: "Come over and I'll introduce you. She is my sister Mona."