Mrs. Todd did not take a great deal of interest in Tokio street scenes. Her mind generally streamed back like vapor to the exalted personage she had recently left, or blew on before to an anticipated welcome. This was the case to-day. Rudely torn from her Prince, she was thinking of the little Countess K----, now in the Suruga Hospital after an attack of appendicitis, to whom she had promised a visit. Count K----, one of the rising statesmen of the country, was a particular friend of Dodge; Minister Todd also believed great things of his future. Gwendolen, beside her mother in the open carriage, answered intelligently, but with obvious lack of interest, the commonplace remarks addressed to her. A foretaste, a prescience of tragedy, lurked like a fog in the air. Companioning Yuki's dilemma came her own,--recognized even in this moment of irritation as incomparably less important, though still maddening with the sting of nettles,--Dodge's foolish devotion to Carmen, his continued coolness to herself. She was not old yet, or experienced enough, to put herself in another's place. Dodge was trying to hurt and humiliate her. Worse still, he was succeeding. She needed to ponder no further. One does not write a geologic treatise on the pebble in one's shoe. Dodge wished to injure her. It was cowardly, unmanly. Dodge prided himself on his Southern blood. Gwendolen, with a sneer, thought him--or tried to believe she thought him--a degenerate specimen of chivalry. If at last he should attempt another overture to her friendship, she would know well how to scorn him! A great jerk of the wheels, and renewed vociferation from the coachman, started the horses in a nervous scamper up the slope. Gwendolen's head went back, the hatpins tugged at her yellow hair. She clutched at the velvet brim of her hat, and at the same moment her lifted eyes fell on the white walls and sagging dome of the Greek Church. The scowl she gave it might have been borrowed from a rice-seller on his barge. "Detestable barbarians!" she muttered. "If they ever _should_ dominate this land!" "Gwendolen," said her mother, also jerked and unnerved by the speed, "you are far too exaggerated in your expression of hatred to Russia. Even Cy says so. You are going to get the Legation into trouble yet!"