We drew up the hill, toward the west gate, and glided past the guard booth. Came to a stop before the portico, where I had once made the acquaintance—if you could call it that—of Sir Harry Oakes. Sir Harry Oakes, who was also on his way out of Nassau, if de Marigny’s information was straight. I tried to imagine this, the Bahamas without Sir Harry, and could not. He was part of the landscape. From time to time, as I rode my bicycle about the island, taking exercise to keep my mind off my lover’s absence, I might see him clearing land somewhere. He drove the bulldozer himself, back and forth, digging up scrub and palmettos and what have you, taking a kind of boylike glee in the destruction. Always he raised his hand and greeted me. Why, just the other day, I’d stopped my bicycle to chat with him, because I knew that Nancy and her mother had decamped for New England once the heat descended on Nassau, and a fellow like Oakes was sure to be bored and restless. It was late afternoon, and we were both perspiring freely, but he didn’t seem to notice the discomfort. I asked about his wife, and he said she was doing well in Bar Harbor, and I asked (rather more carefully) about Nancy. “Doing much better, thanks,” he said. “Away from that sex maniac husband of hers.”

“Oh, be fair, Sir Harry,” I said. “They’re newlyweds.”

Hmph, Oakes said.

“Now, don’t be grumpy. He is a handsome devil, after all. Maybe she couldn’t resist his charm.”

He stuck out his lips a little, but he wasn’t really angry at me. We understood each other, Oakes and I, the way two outsiders will always feel a kinship in a place like this, a place like Nassau.

“He’s not such a terrible character, you know,” I went on. “He does love her. He’s enchanted with her. It’s not the money.”

“Of course it’s not the money. The fool sent me a damned notarized letter, right after they eloped, giving up any rights to it. He’s just a—damn it all—”

“He’s a son-in-law with a will as stubborn as yours.”

Hmph, he said.

“Sir Harry. She’s nineteen, isn’t she? She’s not a child. And she might have done worse, believe me. Much worse.”