He fell into her mood. "We are both asleep. That was why the dog vanished so queerly. Dream-dogs always do. And I don't wonder at my singing, either. People do exactly what they shouldn't when they are asleep. But no! I really don't like the dream version at all. I want this to be true." "Why?" Her tone was low, but it made him tingle. A sudden _mêlée_ of daring, delicious impulses swept over him. "Because I have dreamed too much," he said, in as low a voice. "Here in the East the habit grows on one; we dream of what all the beauty somehow misses--for us. But to-night, at least, is real. I shall have it to remember when you have gone, as I--I suppose you will be soon." She leaned out and picked a slender maple-leaf from a branch that came in through the open side of the pagoda, and, holding it in her fingers, turned toward him. Her lips were parted, as if to speak. But suddenly she tossed it from her, rose and shook out her skirts with a laugh. Carriage-wheels were rolling up the drive from the lower gate. "Thank you!" she cried gaily. "But no hint shall move me. I warn you that I intend to stay a long time!" In the lighted doorway, as Patricia and her mother stepped from the carriage, she swept him a curtsey. "Honorably deign to accept my thanks," she said, "for augustly saving my insignificant life! And now, perhaps, we can be properly introduced!" CHAPTER XI ISHIKICHI Under the frail moon that touched the Embassy garden to such beauty, Haru walked home to the house "so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big" in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods. On Reinanzaka Hill the shadows were iris-hearted. From its high-walled gardens of the great came no glimpses of phantom-lighted _shoji_, no sound of vibrant strings from tea-houses nor gleams of painted lips and fingers of _geisha_. Haru carried a paper-lantern tied to the end of a short wand, but it was not dark enough to need its light, and as she walked, she swung it in graceful circles. She heard a dove sobbing its low _owas! owas!_ and once a crow flapped its sleepy way above her, uttering its harsh note, which, from some subtlety of suggestion hidden from the western mind, the Japanese liken to the accents of love. It startled her for a second; then she began to sing, under her breath, to the tune of her clacking _géta_, a ditty of her childhood: "_Karasu, Karasu!_ "Crow, crow, _Kanzaburo!_ Kanzaburo! _Oya no on wo--_ Forget not the virtue _Wasurena yo!_" Of your honorable parents." On the crest of the hill, by the Street-of-Hollyhocks, a wall opened in a huge gate of heavy burnished beams studded with great iron rivet-heads. Here resided no less a personage than an Imperial Princess. Beside the gate stood a conical sentry-box, in which all day, while the gate was open, stood a soldier of the Household Guards. The box was empty now.