The first drops fell as they were passing through the wicket gate; and they entered the house during a roar of thunder. Reggie was alone. "I see that my fate is sealed," he said, as he rose to meet them. "'The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'" CHAPTER XIX YAÉ SMITH _Nusubito wo Toraete mireba Waga ko nari_. The thief-- When I caught him and looked at him, Lo! My own child! A week of very hard work began for Reggie. The Ambassador was reporting home on every imaginable subject from political assassination to the manufacture of celluloid. This was part of Lady Cynthia's scheme. She was determined to throw Yaé Smith and Geoffrey Barrington together all the time, and to risk the consequences. So Yaé though she had her room at the hotel, became an inmate of Reggie's villa. She took all her meals there, and her siesta during most of the afternoons. She even passed whole nights with Reggie; and their relations could no longer be a secret even to Geoffrey's laborious discretion. This knowledge troubled him; for the presence of lovers, and the shadows cast by their intimacies are always disquieting even to the purest minds. But Geoffrey felt that it was no business of his; and that Reggie and Yaé being what they were, it would be useless hypocrisy for him to censure their pleasures. Meanwhile, Asako was writing to him, bewailing her loneliness. So one morning at breakfast he announced that he must be getting back to Tokyo. A cloud passed over Yaé's face. "Not yet, big captain," she expostulated; "I want to take you right to the far end of the lake where the bears live." "Very well," agreed Geoffrey, "to-morrow morning early, then; for the next day I really must go." He wrote to Asako a long letter with much about the lake and Yaé Smith, promising to return within forty-eight hours. At daybreak next morning Yaé was hammering at Geoffrey's door. "Wake up, old sleepy captain," she cried. Geoffrey got the boat ready; and Yaé prepared a picnic breakfast to be eaten on the way. Poor Reggie, of course, had work at the Embassy; he could not come. It was an ideal excursion. They reached Senju, the wood-cutter's village at the end of the lake. They ascended the forest path as far as the upper lake, a mere pond of reeds and sedges, which the bears are supposed to haunt. Geoffrey and Yaé, however, saw nothing more alarming than the village curs. "Returned in safety from the land of danger!" cried the girl, as she sprang ashore at the steps of the villa. The air and exercise had wearied Geoffrey. After lunch he changed into a kimono of Reggie's. Then he lay down on his bed and was soon fast asleep. How long he slept he could not say; but he awoke slowly out of confusing dreams. Somebody was in his room. Somebody was near his bed. Was it Asako? Was it a dream?