Daunt's pipe sputtered feebly, and, girding at the heat, he hurled it at a handful of blue ducks that plashed tiredly in the gray-green heave, and watched them dive, to reappear far away, like bobbing corks. He wished he could as easily scatter the blue-devils that dogged him. He drew a sigh of relief as he reached the long elevated board-walk and shook the sand from his shoes. Underneath its shore-end a fisherman sat in the stern of a boat fishing with cormorants. A row of the solemn birds sat on a pole projecting over the water, each tethered by a string whose end was tied to the man's wrist. They seemed to be asleep, but now and then one would plunge like a diver, to reappear with a fish wriggling in its beak. Daunt watched them listlessly a moment, then, passing beneath a great bronze _torii_, he slowly climbed the single shaded street that staggered up the hill between the multitudes of gay little shops running over with colored sea-shells, with grotesque lanterns made of inflated fish-skins, with carved crystal and pink and white coral--up and up, by old, old flights of mossy steps, under more ancient trees, by green monuments and lichen-stippled Buddhas, till the sea below crawled like a wrinkled counterpane. Daunt knew a tea-house on the very lip of the cliff, the _Kinki-ro_--"Inn of the Golden Turtle"--and he bent his steps lazily in its direction. In the heavy heat the low tile roof looked cool and inviting. Tall soft-eyed iris were standing in its garden overlooking the water, and against the green their velvety leaves made vivid splashes of golden blue. On a dead tree two black crows were quarreling and cherry-petals powdered the paths like pink hail. The haze, sifting from the sky, seemed to wrap everything in a vast, shimmering veil. At the hedge he paused an instant. Some one, somewhere, was humming, low-voiced, an air that he had once loved. He pushed open the gate and went on into the tremulous radiance. Then he stopped short. Barbara was seated above him in the fork of a low camelia tree, one arm laid out along a branch, her green gown blending with a bamboo thicket behind her and her vivid face framed in the blossoms. She sat, chin in hand, looking dreamily out across the bay, and the hummed song had a rhythm that seemed to fit her thought--slow and infinitely tender. "You!" he cried. She turned with a startled movement that dissolved into low, delicious laughter. "Fairly caught," she answered. "I don't often revert far enough to climb trees, but I thought no one but Haru and I was here. Will you come and help me down, Honorable Fly-man?" "Wait--" he said. "What was the song you were humming?" She looked at him with a quick intake of breath, then for answer began to sing, in a voice that presently became scarce more than a whisper: