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."