We passed through scenes of hideous want. We climbed the slope of Mount McCabe. The air grew cooler. There was mist. Frank’s house had once been the home of Nestor Aamons, father of Mona, architect of the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle. Aamons had designed it. It straddled a waterfall; had a terrace cantilevered out into the mist rising from the fall. It was a cunning lattice of very light steel posts and beams. The interstices of the lattice were variously open, chinked with native stone, glazed, or curtained by sheets of canvas. The effect of the house was not so much to enclose as to announce that a man had been whimsically busy there. A servant greeted me politely and told me that Frank wasn’t home yet. Frank was expected at any moment. Frank had left orders to the effect that I was to be made happy and comfortable, and that I was to stay for supper and the night. The servant, who introduced himself as Stanley, was the first plump San Lorenzan I had seen. Stanley led me to my room; led me around the heart of the house, down a staircase of living stone, a staircase sheltered or exposed by steel-framed rectangles at random.
