Through it all, the chateau gleamed red and purple and gray against the green mountainside, baked where the sun could meet its face, cool where the caverns blew upon it with their rich, damp breath.
The six months were passing away, however, in spite of themselves; ten weeks were left before the worn, but determined heirs could cast off their bonds and rush away to other climes.

It mattered little whether they went away rich or poor; they were to go! Go! That was the richest thing the future held out to them--more precious than the wealth for which they stayed.

Whatever was being done for them in London and Boston, it was no recompense for the weariness of heart and soul that they had found in the green island of Japat.
True, they rode and played and swam and romped without restraint, but beneath all of their abandon there lurked the ever-present pathos of the jail, the asylum, the detention ward.

The blue sky seemed streaked with the bars of their prison; the green earth clanked as with the sombre tread of feet crossing flagstones.
Not until the end of January was there a sign of revolt against the ever-growing, insidious condition of melancholy.

As they turned into the last third of their exile, they found heart to rejoice in the thought that release was coming nearer and nearer.