“Once more I found myself looking at the garden where the white-clad figure lurked in the shadows. A moment of waiting, then down the moonlit open space came the flitting figure of the girl. Swiftly she approached, panic in her wild flight, in the beautiful features now close enough for distinct view. She was sobbing as she ran. The man stepped out to her. She stopped, stood for a second regarding him with a look of inexpressible reproach, and then, averting her head, thrust into his eager grasp the sacred jewel. He slipped it into his pocket and caught her in his arms. She gazed at him in yearning doubt, her head drawn back, her soul seeming to question him through her eyes, and then suddenly she flung herself toward him, her bare arms round his neck, her mouth on his, kissing him in a passionate paroxysm of caresses. Desperately she yielded herself to him, frenziedly claiming the reward for her crime--his love. I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks as she kissed him eagerly again and again, all else forgotten but absorption in his presence. In a thrill of apprehension, I remembered the priest. Surely the alarm was given--a horde of fanatics searching for her while she lingered so recklessly! Despite the utter silence in which all this passed, I almost fancied I could hear the sonorous booming of a gong. “My apprehension quickened to a stab of acute alarm. There, slinking toward them in the shadows, as stealthily as a cat, came a crouching figure, nearer and nearer from behind. The steel blade he clutched flashed in the moonlight. His face looked up, illumined in the soft radiance which suffused the garden. I recognized it--the priest who had slumbered at his post!--and then, with a curious little internal shock, but vaguely, as if these later incidents belonged to another existence, the full recognition dawned upon me--the wretched native who had loitered about the deserted pagoda of Cho-lon, the conjurer of the café, the conjurer who--ages since--had filled the saloon of the _Mary Gleeson_ with smoke and incense from the red fire of a bronze bowl! His ugly face contorted with vindictive cunning, he crept now upon the oblivious lovers locked in their passionate embrace. I saw him gather himself for the spring, the long, murderous knife openly in his hand. In a spasm of horror all of me tried frantically to shriek a warning, but I could not utter a sound. I seemed to be only a watching brain, divorced from all the other organs of the body. He leaped.