December arrived, Christmas came and went. Life was almost pastoral--no, hardly that; it was more _un fete champetre_. Each day after breakfast the hotel emptied itself into the sunshine and merriment, emptied itself, that is, of all but the invalids. Molly shunned these. She never even looked the way of one if she could help it. There was a lake party one night. They took boat at the hotel pier in various small craft and followed the chain of lakes to an island midway of the farthest. The moon was up as they started. The party was of the gayest, and one might have said that Mr. Henderson was out of his element. Certainly his face was hardly suggestive of hilarity. But he followed Mrs. Garnier into one of the larger boats and took his place with a sort of doggedness. Even in the moonlight the sharpening angle of his cheek-bone was visible, and the deepening of the sockets in which his eyes were set, eyes that followed Mrs. Garnier insistently. Molly being of the party, it followed that Alexina was, too, but that William Leroy was of it seemed to quicken something in his own sense of humour. His manner with the gay world was perhaps a little stony. He avowed, when thus accused by Alexina and Mr. Jonas, that it was to cover bashfulness. "I hate people," he declared. Yet, for a bashful youth, he was singularly deliberate and masterful, seeming to know what he wanted and how to get it. To-night it was that Alexina go with him in a small boat. The others started first, a youth in a striped flannel coat, strumming a guitar. King put out last. He rowed slowly and often the boat drifted. When they entered the lock connecting the first lake with the next, the other boats had all passed through. The moon scarcely penetrated the dense foliage on the banks above them, and the ripple of the water against the boat seemed only to emphasize the silence, the aloofness. There must have been an early blossom of jasmine about, so sweet was the gloom. When they passed out into the vaulted space and open water of the next lake, the other boats were far ahead. The tinkling cadence of the guitar floated back to them. He rowed lazily on. Presently he spoke. "I wonder if you remember how we used to talk, 'way back yonder, about the Land of Colchis?" "Yes," said Alexina; "I remember." "I believe we are there at last. We closed the contract for our oranges to-day. It's pretty fair gold, the fruit in Colchis. We pick for delivery on Monday." He never had talked to her of personal affairs before, it was Mrs. Leroy who had told her what she knew. "There are several purchasers looking at the place we are going to sell, for dwellers in Colchis, you know, are only sojourners; they long for home." "The Jasons, too?" "This Jason at any rate. He wants four seasons to his year, and to hear his horse's feet on pike, and to put his seed into loam."