Even at college, Langley's first aëroplane had interested him and out of that interest had grown a course of reading which had given him a broad technical knowledge of applied mechanics. In Japan he had conceived the idea of the new fan-propeller, worked out in many an hour of study in the little Japanese house in Aoyama, which he had taken because it adjoined the parade-ground where his earliest experiments were made. At first the _Corps Diplomatique_ had smiled at this as a harmless _pour passer le temps_, to be classified with the Roumanian Minister's kennel of Pomeranians or the Chilian Secretary's collection of _daimyo_ dolls. But week by week the little crowd of Japanese spectators had grown larger; often Daunt had recognized among the attentive brown faces this or that superior military officer whom he knew, albeit in civilian dress. One day his friend, Viscount Sakai, a dapper young officer on the General Staff, had surprised him with the offer from the Japanese War Department of the use of an empty garage on the edge of the great esplanade. Only a month ago, he had awaked to the knowledge that his name was known to the aëro enthusiasts of Paris, New York and Vienna, and that his propeller was an assured success. Yet to-night he felt that he had somehow failed. The splendid vitality of the moving scene, the thud and click of wooden _géta_ and the whirr of _rick'sha_--all the many-keyed diapason of the rustling, lanterned vistas stretching under the pale moon-lighted sky--lacked the sense of intimate companionship. The warm still air, freighted with aromatic scents of cedar from some new-built shop, the pungent smell of incense burning before some shadowed shrine, the odors of drenched shrubbery behind the massive retaining wall of some rich noble's compound, came to him with a new sense of estrangement. The murmured sound of voices behind the glimmering paper _shoji_ told him, suddenly, that he was lonely. For the first time in six years, he was feeling keenly his long isolation from the things of home, the pleasant fellowship and the firesides of old friends. In this foreign service which he so loved, he had been growing out of touch, he told himself, out of thought, of the things "Big" Murray had sought and found. Unconsciously, the "drivel," as he had denominated it, of the letter in his pocket, had infected him with sweet and foolish imaginings, and slowly these took the nebulous shape of a woman. He had often dreamed of her, though he had never seen her face. It was half-veiled now in the bluish haze of his pipe, while she talked to him before a fire of driftwood (that burned with red and blue lights because of sea-ghosts in it) and her voice was low and clear like a flute.