"Gwendolen, Gwendolen!" Yuki was crying. "I have just now learned, I think, why you have not come or wrote to me." (Pause.) "Yes, it was just that thing,--my rank, it is called. Alas, do you remember, Gwendolen, that poor little sea-maid how she feel when the proud grandmother beckoned eight large oysters to fasten upon her scales? Well, I have now the pinch of such oysters. But I will not care so much if only you will come!" (Pause.) "My mother is with me, and her servants, but they must go very soon. I will be alone.--Yes, he is to be absent all the day. Oh, come quickly,--quickly,--I cannot bear some more long waiting." Yuki wheeled from the telephone. "She will come, mother; my friend will come! Let us go to the long drawing-room and wait for her. I will send tea and cakes to comfort the silly Maru. Some other day we shall see all of this big house. It is very ugly, though costing much money. That is honorably often the case with foreign things. Oh, mother, I have been so hungry for you and my golden friend! She will be brought to us in the long drawing-room. We are in heart and soul, if not in race, true sisters. How kind she was to me at school! I have written you before. The other girls would tease me. They asked impertinent questions, and would always be tormenting me to dance. Gwendolen was the only one to see how I felt. She protected me, and would not let me dance until my heart began to sing. She knew that real dancing, like poetry, should come only when your heart sings,--not just because you are requested. Sometimes in homesickness I would dance, sometimes in joy of springtime flowers. Those girls tried, too, to dance,--the funny American girls! But they could never learn. Not even Gwendolen could learn, though I taught and taught and taught her!" Excitement bred of the coming visit caught her up like a leaf. Prattling on, she moved swiftly into the long room, beckoning now and then for Iriya to follow. The mother kept at quite a distance, embarrassed by this lack of restraint in a married daughter. In the centre of the room the girl paused, and, as if impelled, threw herself into a pose of wonderful beauty, every bone, every inch of white flesh set, as it were, into visible expression of a poetic thought. "I did not know that ever again I should wish to dance like this," Iriya heard her murmur. "Yes, I am coming back to myself. Even that little soul that fled on the ship,--it may come back last of all, but it will come."