"Captain Hart thinks we would better stay aboard to-night, Barbara," he said. "There is a nasty sea and we should be sure of a drenching in the dinghy. We have no change of clothing, you know." "You will be quite comfortable, Miss Fairfax," the captain's voice spoke deferentially from the doorway. "The guest-rooms are always kept ready." "Very well," she said, a little wearily. "That will be best, no doubt." She held up the torn wrapper. "What was in this, I wonder?" The captain confessed his indiscretion with embarrassment, and she absolved him with a smile that covered a sharper pang than she had yet felt that evening. For that thin disk had been on the hillside that Nikko night--perhaps had heard that quarrel, had seen that blow, had watched a man crawling, staggering foot by foot, till he collapsed against the frame that held it! By what strange chance had it been sent to her here? Her uncle bade her good night presently, being an indifferent sailor, and betook himself to bed. The room that had been prepared for her opened into the saloon. She was too restless to retire, and after a time she climbed up the companion-way to the windy deck. The vaulted sapphire of the sky had been swept clean of cloud and the stars sparkled whitely. Off at one side, a flock of sinister shadows, she could make out the Squadron of battle-ships, and beyond, in a curving line, the twinkling lights of the Bund. Could it ever again be to her that magical shore she had first seen from a ship's deck, with hills which the cherry-trees made fairy tapestries of green-rose, and mountains creased of purple velvet and veined with gold? The great white phantom lifting above them--would it henceforth be but a bulk of ice and stone, no longer the shrine of the Goddess-of-Radiant-Flower-Bloom? The sky--would it ever again seem the same violet arch that had bent over a Tokyo garden of musk flowers and moonlight? Would the world never seem beautiful to her again? All about her the foam-stippled water glowed with points of phosphorescence, as though a thousand ghostly lanterns were afloat. It made her think of the festival of the _Bon_, of which Thorn had told her, when the _Shoryo-buné_--the boats of the departed spirits--in lambent flotillas, go glimpsing down to the sea. How unbelievable that she should never see him again! She felt a sudden envy of the placid millions encircling her to whose faith no life was ever lost, whose loved ones were ever coming back in the perennial cherry-blooms, the maple-leaves, the whispering pines. Her love would come back to her only in bitter memories, in painful thoughts that would shame and burn. All else beside, she had been Austen Ware's promised wife. How could she still feel love for the man who had caused his death? Yet--if she must--if she could never tear that image from her breast!