Finally, and chiefly, that rare mask, the face of Mara is the same her father wears, and so is half a world away from the open countenance of the lady who carries Daniel Boone’s direct ancestral dagger. Yet there are things readable in the Singaporian countenances. The sincere passion for jungle beauty revealed in the face of Mara can be discerned. The Asiatic necromancy, the instinct for intrigue, is hidden by the innocence of the experiences of her sheltered days, and also, as in the face of her really wicked father, it is hidden by that University air of submitting absolutely to the open finalities of scholarship. And so they will often submit, where Singapore is not concerned. But one would say all Mara’s scholars are poets to her, and of her father all his scholars are statesmen. Each is the other’s flattering image. Each is disarmed in the presence of the other, artless and fond and kind. She continues this evening by talking frankly with her father about her suitors. I am as a well worn article of furniture. My ears do not trouble her. Are we not all members of the order that has sworn in a great whisper to conquer the world in the name of the holy green glass image that dwells in the temple on the far off Raffles plain? She asks her father which man will be of the greater service to Our Lord of Cocaine? Will it be the son of Slick Slack Kopensky, Crawling Jim:—or Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, who thinks he has converted my good mistress to Mary of Bethlehem and all the saints of the western heaven. Shall she do lip service to his faith, when he is present, till the day of all days when Singapore ceases to whisper and comes roaring against the world? Or shall she take Crawling Jim for all time? She is remarkably interested in both men. I am all curiosity over her tenderness for Jim. She calls him James. To be sure, he has undertaken a perilous thing for a son of Springfield. He has already discarded the wearing of anything white. July 7:—There are not many other Singaporians in the city, and tonight comes an all-Caucasian party except for servants, host and hostess. My amazement about Mara’s attitude toward James now ceases. In this company he is a new creature.