the grand piano in the far corner. There were no overhead lights, the
plugs for the lamps were set in the baseboard, and the radiance was
pleasantly diffused, warm and subdued: the dull immaculately white
paint of the bookshelves on his left, silver frames on a table,
harmonious fabrics and spots of color, consciously and sub-consciously
spread a restful pattern. In reply to his comment Fanny acknowledged
that she had seen the snow; she hated winter, she proceeded, and
thought that if it turned out as bad as last year they might get away
to Cuba and see Daniel.

Daniel was Lee's brother, four years his junior, an administrador of a
sugar estancia in the Province of Camagüey; a man who, absorbed in his
crops and his adopted Spanish-tropical civilization, rarely returned to
the United States. This projected trip to Cuba they had discussed for
many Novembers; every year Fanny and he promised each other that, early
in February, they would actually go; and preparatory letters were
exchanged with Daniel Randon; but it always came to nothing. Either it
was impossible for Fanny to leave the children, the house, or the
servants, or Lee's affairs were in need of close supervision.

Suddenly it annoyed him to discuss again, uselessly, Camagüey; it had
become only a vain pretence, a sustained mirage, of escape from
disagreeable days. While it was hot in Cuba, Daniel maintained, the
trade wind coming with evening made the nights cool; it was far more
comfortable, summer and winter, at La Quinta than in Eastlake. Cuba, he
made it seem, Havana and the colonias of cane, the coast and the
interior, was a place with none of the drawbacks of a northern land or
society; there were, certainly, conventions--the Spanish were a very
punctilious people--but they operated in a conveniently definite,
Daniel might almost say a sensible masculine, manner. He had not gone