lean-shaven, immaculate, monosyllabic, awaiting the overdue meal. The
French windows were open to the scent of myriads of roses outside, and
also to the morning sun, far too high. The negro servants were
hurrying to and fro, Molly nowhere visible.

Later, as the dishes were being uncovered, she appeared, her
unstockinged little feet thrust into pretty French slippers, and her
cambric nightgown by no means concealed by a negligee, all lace and
ribbons, hastily caught together. Yet she was pretty, pretty like a
lovely and naughty child.

Nor did the embarrassment of Harriet, the presence of the servants, or
her husband's cold preoccupation with his breakfast disturb Molly, who
trailed along with apparent unconcern until, reaching his elbow, she
threw a wicked glance at Harriet, then kissed him on that spot on his
head which, but for a few carefully disposed strands, must have been
termed bald.

At the thing, absurd as it was, there swept over Harriet the hot
shrinking of one made conscious of sex for the first time. With
throbbing at throat and ears, she gazed into her plate, her feeling,
oddly enough, centring in keen revulsion against her brother.

But Molly was dragging a chair to his elbow. "What's the fricassee
made of, Alexander?"

Her husband vouching her no reply, she slipped an arm about his neck,
and, leaning over, drew his fork to her mouth and tasted the morsel
thereon.

Then she turned her head sideways to regard him. "Don't frown it back,
Alec, the smile I mean. I adore you when you don't want to and have to
let it come. Acknowledge now, this is the way to breakfast."

And Harriet, who had been led to regard playfulness as little less
than vice, was conscious of Molly trying to force a ripe fig between
Alexander's lips, repressed, thin lips upon which softening sat as if
afraid of itself and her.

"You see," Molly was explaining, "I couldn't get down sooner. P'tite
was making the most absurd catches at her mosquito bar, and Celeste
refusing to laugh at her. You haven't finished your breakfast? Why
must you always hurry off? No"--her hand against his mouth, he, risen
now, she on a knee in her chair, clinging to him--"don't tell me any
more about Sumter having been fired upon, and your being worried over
business. I hate business. What's anything this moment, if you would
only see it, compared with me, and ripe figs dipped in cream?"

And then the triumph of her laugh as, his arms suddenly around he