Barbara came on Daunt in the middle of the block. He had stationed himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser stature of the native crowds. With him was a Japanese boy who, she noted with surprise, was Ito, one of the house-servants. Her heart jumped as she saw the relief spring to Daunt's anxious face. "_Mea culpa!_" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her hand to him. "What a trouble I have been to you! I was actually lost. Isn't it absurd?" Her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. All his heart had leaped to meet them. In the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but since then it had been given him partly to understand. His thoughtless words--blunderer that he was!--had seemed to carp at her like a whining school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! Yet to his memory even her hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were golden, and Tokyo once more fairy-land. "What _will_ the others say!" she said. "They will have missed us long ago." "We will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. We can get _rick'sha_ at the next stand." "What did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you found I had vanished into thin air?" "I imagined for a while you were punishing me. Then I guessed you had somehow turned into the side street. But I felt that you would find your way back, so--I waited." "Thank you," she said softly. "I have not acted so badly since I was a child. Are you going to shrive me?" "I am the one to ask that of you," he replied. "No--no! It is I. I must do penance. What is it to be?" He looked at her steadily; his eyes shone with dark fire. In the pause she felt her heart throb quickly, and she laughed with a sweet unsteadiness. "I am glad you are going to give me none," she said. "But I do," he answered, "I shall. I--" The boy Ito, behind them, spoke his name. Daunt started with a stab of recollection and drew from his pocket a folded pink paper, fastened with a blue seal. "How stupid of me! My wits have gone wool-gathering to-night. Here is a telegram for you. It came soon after we left the Embassy, and Mrs. Dandridge, thinking it might be urgent, sent Ito after us to the tea-house. He missed us, but saw me here on his way back." Barbara broke the seal and held the message to the candle-light that shone from a low temple entrance. She did not notice at the moment that it was the temple of the Fox-God whose alms she had that evening denied. She had guessed who was the sender and the knowledge fell like a cool, fateful hand on her mood. And alas, on Daunt's also. For, as she turned the leaf, his gaze, wandering through the temple doorway, to the candle-starred mirror above the tithe-box, had unwittingly seen reflected there, in the painfully exact chirography of a Japanese telegraph-clerk, the signature [Illustration: Austen Ware (in reverse)]