But he was not sleeping when dawn came, gray in the sky. It stole pink-fingered through the window and drew rosy lights on the blank wall across which strange fancies of his had linked themselves in a weird processional. It crept between the heavy curtains of the study below, and gilded the fittings of the little battle-ship on the mantel--as though to deck it in crimson bunting like its mammoth prototypes in the lower bay. For at that moment the Yokohama Bund was throbbing with the _salvos_ of great guns pealing a salute. The water's edge was lined with a watching crowd. Files of marines were drawn up beneath the green-trimmed arches and cutters flying the sun-flag lay at the wharf, where groups of officers stood in dress-uniform. Over the ledge of the morning was spread a filmy curtain of damask rose, and beneath it, into the harbor, like a broad dotted arrow-head, was steaming a flock of black battle-ships, with inky smoke pouring from their stacks. CHAPTER XIV WHEN BARBARA AWOKE When Barbara awoke next morning she lay for a moment staring open-eyed from her big pillow at the white wall above, where a hanging-shelf projected to guard the sleeper from falling plaster in earthquake. The room was filled with a soft light that filtered in through the split-bamboo blinds. Then she remembered: it was her first whole day in Japan. She felt full of a gay _insouciance_, a glad lightness of joy that she had never felt before. Slipping a thin rose-colored robe over her nightgown, she threw open the window and leaned out. The air was as pure and clean as if it had been sieved through silk, and she breathed it with long inspirations. It made her think of the unredeemed dirt of other countries, the sooty air of crowded factories, hardly growing foliage and unlovely walls. The Embassy was a pretentious frame structure in which frequent alterations had masked an original plan. With its tall porte-cochère, its long narrow L which served as Chancery, the smaller white cottage across the lawn occupied by the Secretary of Embassy, the rambling servants' quarters and stables, it suggested some fine old Virginia homestead, transported by Aladdin's genii to the heart of an oriental garden. For the tiny rock-knoll, with its single twisted pine-tree in front of the main door, the wistaria arbor and red dwarf maples, the great stone lanterns, the miniature lake and pebbled rivulet spanned by its arching bridge--all these were Japanese. In the early morning the eerie witchery of the night was gone, but the sky was as deep as space and the air languid with the perfume and warmth of a St. Martin's summer. A green-golden glow tinged the camelia hedges and above them the long cool expanse of weather-boarding and olive blinds--like a carving in jade and old ivory.