"Not quite that, I think," said Gwendolen, smiling. "Though, indeed, I have never known a friend to take music's place, except Yuki; and now that she is a princess, I suppose I can't feel her to be so much my own. I shall love to come to you and play. Your voice is like sunshine on an English fountain." "Ah!" said the other, "what a charming speech! No man could say anything half so pretty! Now, as reward, I am going to give you a piece of valuable advice." She leaned confidentially near. "Make your escape while you can." She nodded significantly toward the biwa player, who, with Yuki beside him, stood shrinkingly in the doorway. "I've heard him once,--or one like him. It is what you Americans might call 'the limit'!" "You mean for me to go? But I have never heard any Japanese music at all!" protested Gwendolen. "Oh, in that case--" said Mrs. Wyndham, with her delicate shrug. "If you care for the experience!" She hurried off with many protestations of regret. Several other ladies followed her example. The biwa player now stood beside the piano. Two Japanese tatami (padded straw mats six feet in length) were brought in and placed upon the floor. Before inviting him to be seated Yuki made a hesitating little speech to the company, first in English, then in Japanese, saying to the foreigners that while the music to come would doubtless be strange, and possibly displeasing to them, to her and her compatriots it was a trumpet-call to heroism. "It stirs our blood to every drop!" she cried, forgetting, for the instant, her shyness. "It echoes to the brave deeds of a thousand years ago,--it foretells deeds more greater that may come! It is the crying of strong souls, it is breath of our fathers' Gods!" Gwendolen, in that vague sort of way in which impressions of alien customs are formed, had believed all male musicians in Japan to be blind. Some one had told her so, or she had read it. She was surprised, therefore, and interested, to see in this famous singer of battle-hymns a young man, indeed almost a boy, with thin, shaven face, tumultuous black hair not too closely or evenly cut, tossed in thick locks all over his well-poised head; and eyes, large, straight, expressive, and brilliant enough to be the ornament of a young French or Italian seigneur. He showed a slight embarrassment, at first, in the presence of so many women. He was used to the audience of statesmen, to the flashing response of Majesty. Here were not only Japanese girls, mere children, but a great company of high-nosed, pink and purple foreigners. Saturated as he was, made up of lore and legend, with songs of the Lady Sakanouyé, or of Ono no Komachi never far from his lips, even Gwendolen's bright beauty seemed a trifle abnormal, bleached, repellent.