to me to touch the family honor.

Staring through the unwashed window-pane, moodily brooding on what I had
learned, I followed impatiently the flight of those small, gray swallows
of the North, colorless as shadows, whirling in spirals above the cold
chimneys, to tumble in like flakes of gray soot only to drift out again,
wind--blown, aimless, irrational, senseless things. And again that
hatred seized me for all this pale Northern world, where the very birds
gyrated like moon-smitten sprites, and the white spectre of virtue sat
amid orgies where bloodless fools caroused.

"Are you homesick, cousin?" she asked.

"Ay--if you must know the truth!" I broke out, not meaning to say my
fill and ease me. "This is not the world; it is a gray inferno, where
shades rave without reason, where there is no color, no repose, nothing
but blankness and unreason, and an air that stings all living life to
spasms of unrest. Your sun is hot, yet has no balm; your winds plague
the skin and bones of a man; the forests are unfriendly; the waters all
hurry as though bewitched! Brooks are cold and tasteless as the fog; the
unsalted, spiceless air clogs the throat and whips the nerves till the
very soul in the body strains, fluttering to be free! How can decent
folk abide here?"

I hesitated, then broke into a harsh laugh, for my cousin sat staring at
me, lips parted, like a fair shape struck into marble by a breath
of magic.

"Pardon," I said. "Here am I, kindly invited to the council of a family
whose interests lie scattered through estates from the West Indies to