"_Ma-a-a!_" she exclaimed. "How it is _beau_-tee-ful! _né_? only--" "Only what?" "My thinks the _Ojo-San_ must suffer through the center!" Laughingly Barbara caught the other's slim wrist and drew her before the mirror. By oriental standards the Japanese girl was as finely bred as herself. In the two faces, both keenly delicate and sensitive, yet so sharply contrasted--one palely olive under its jetty pillow of straight black hair, the other fair and brown-eyed, crowned with curling gold--the extremes of East and West looked out at each other. "See, Haru," said Barbara. "How different we are!" "You so more good-look!" sighed the Japanese girl. "My jus' like the night." "Ah, but a moonlighted night," cried Barbara, "soft and warm and full of secrets. When you have a sweetheart you will be far more lovely to him than any foreign girl could be!" Haru blushed rosily. "Sweetheart p'r'aps now," she said, "--all same kind America story say 'bout." "Have you really, Haru?" cried Barbara. "I love to hear about sweethearts. Maybe--some day--I may have one, too. Some time you'll tell me about him. Won't you?" Suddenly, far below the window, there came a snarling scramble and a savage, menacing bay. Barbara leaned out. A tawny, long-muzzled wolf-hound, fastened to a stake, glared up at her out of red-dimmed eyes. "Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "He looks sick. Does he have to be tied up?" The Japanese girl shivered. "Very bad dog," she said. "My think very danger to not kill." The deep tone of the dinner gong shuddered through the house and Barbara hastened out. Patricia met her in the hall and the two girls, with arms about each other's waists, descended the broad angled stair to the dining-room, where the Ambassador stood, tall and spare and iron-gray, with a contagious twinkle in his kindly eye. "Well," he asked, "did you feel the earthquake?" Barbara gave an exclamation of dismay. "Has there been one already?" "Pshaw!" he said contritely. "Perhaps there hasn't. You see, in Japan, we get so used to asking that question--" "Now, Ned!" warned Mrs. Dandridge. "You'll have Barbara frightened to death. We really don't have them so very often, my dear--and only gentle shakes. You mustn't be dreaming of Messina." The Ambassador pointed to the ceiling, where a wide crack zigzagged across. "There's a recent autograph to bear me out. It happened on the eleventh of last month." "Father remembers the date because of the horrible accident it caused," said Patricia. "A piece of the kitchen plaster came down in his favorite dessert and we had to fall back on pickled plums. "I'm simply wild to see your gowns, Barbara," she continued, as they took their places. "Is that the latest sleeve, and is everything going to be slinky? We're always about six months behind. I know a girl in Yokohama who goes to every steamer and kodaks the smartest tourists. I've almost been driven to do it myself."