reached above his knees, and a silver jacket and a sombrero that
was so heavy with braid that it flashed like a halo about his
head in the sunlight, and he was ordered not to wear it until the
ladies came, under penalty of arrest. It delighted Clay to find
that it was only the beautiful things and the fine things of
his daily routine that suggested her to him, as though she could
not be associated in his mind with anything less worthy, and he
kept saying to himself, ``She will like this view from the end of
the terrace,'' and ``This will be her favorite walk,'' or ``She
will swing her hammock here,'' and ``I know she will not fancy
the rug that Weimer chose.''

While this fairy palace was growing the three men lived as
roughly as before in the wooden hut at the terminus of the
freight road, three hundred yards below the house, and hidden
from it by an impenetrable rampart of brush and Spanish bayonet.
There was a rough road leading from it to the city, five miles
away, which they had extended still farther up the hill to the
Palms, which was the name Langham had selected for his father's
house. And when it was finally finished, they continued to live
under the corrugated zinc roof of their office building, and
locking up the Palms, left it in charge of a gardener and a
watchman until the coming of its rightful owners.

It had been a viciously hot, close day, and even now the air came
in sickening waves, like a blast from the engine-room of a
steamer, and the heat lightning played round the mountains over
the harbor and showed the empty wharves, and the black outlines
of the steamers, and the white front of the Custom-House, and
the long half-circle of twinkling lamps along the quay.