Harriet would have been at a loss, even now she was
embarrassed, though she hovered over the girl, anxious and solicitous,
and even touched the pretty, shining hair with her hand.

"Let her alone: let her cry it out," said the Major.

Alexina, groping for his hand, held to it like a very child and cried
on.

PART THREE

"Joy will be part of the Kingdom of God."
RENAN.

CHAPTER ONE

Immediately after the wedding Alexina and Molly went South. Molly
turned petulant at sight of Aden and Alexina could not blame her;
indeed, she and Celeste were of a mind with her as they drove from the
station to the hotel.

The horses ploughed through loose, greyish sand, the sidewalks along
the street, ostensibly the business thoroughfare, were of board, not
in the best of repair, and the skyline of the street was varied
according as the frame stores had or did not have a sham front
simulating a second story. Men sat on tilted chairs beneath awnings
along the way and stared at the occupants of the carriage as it
passed. It was mid-afternoon, which, in Aden, seemed to be a glaring,
shadeless hour and, but for these occasional somnolent starers, a
deserted one. Yet people lived here, existed, spent their lives in
this crude, poor hideousness, this mean newness; the Leroys lived
here! And that their son would let them, would remain himself!

"What did we come for anyhow?" queried Molly. "The world is full of
charming places. You do adopt the queerest notions, Malise."

Malise sat convicted. It had sounded so alluring, so suggestive of
charm and languor; the very name of Aden had breathed a sort of magic.

And Alexina had come, too, buoyed up by a large and epic idea of
restitution. How foolish, how young, how almost insulting from the
Leroys' standpoint it suddenly seemed.

"We spent two winters in Italy, Jean and I, and one in Algiers," Molly
was saying plaintively. "Heavens, Malise, they're building that house
on stilts, right over a sinkhole of tin cans."

For that matter there were tin cans everywhere. It was most
depressing.

"Even Louisville was better than this," said Molly grudgingly. "Don't
look so resigned, Malise; it's not becoming."

They turned a corner and the driver stopped before a long, two-storied
building, painted white, which proved to be the hotel. It stood up
from the street on wooden posts, the space between latticed. A railed
gallery ran acr