"Yes," he said, in a tone oddly restrained. "And was my mother with you when he fell in love with her?" "Yes," and after a pause: "I married them." "Then they went to Nagasaki," she said softly, "and there--he died. You weren't there then?" "No," he answered in a low voice. His face was still turned away, and she caught an unaccustomed note of feeling in his voice. He left her abruptly and began to pace up and down the deck, while she stood watching the shoreline sharpen, the tangled blur of harbor resolve and shift into manifold detail. Shapeless dots had become anchored ships, a black pencil a wharf, a long yellow-gray streak a curved shore-front lined with buildings, and the warm green blotch rising behind it a foliaged hill pricked out with soft, gray roofs. There was a rush of passengers to one side, where from a brisk little tug, at whose peak floated a flag bearing a blood-red sun, a handful of spick-and-span Japanese officials were climbing the ship's ladder. At length the bishop spoke again at her elbow, now in his usual voice: "What are you going to do with that man, Barbara?" A faint flush rose in her cheek. "With what man?" "Austen Ware." She shrugged her shoulders and laughed--a little uneasily. "What can one do with a man when he is ten thousand miles away?" "He's not the sort to give up a chase." "Even a wild-goose chase?" she countered. "When I was a boy in Virginia," he said with a humorous eye, "I used to chase wild geese, and bag 'em, too." The bishop sauntered away, leaving a frown on Barbara's brow. She had had a swift mental vision of a cool, dark-bearded face and assured bearing that the past year had made familiar. It was a handsome face, if somewhat cold. Its owner was rich, his standing was unquestioned. The fact that he was ten years her senior had but made his attentions the more flattering. He had had no inherited fortune and had been no idler; for this she admired him. If she had not thrilled to his declaration, so far as liking went, she liked him. The week she left New York he had intended a yachting trip to the Mediterranean. When he told her, coolly enough, that he should ask her again in Japan, she had treated it as a jest, though knowing him quite capable of meaning it. From every worldly standpoint he was distinctly eligible. Every one who knew them both confidently expected her to marry Ware. Well, why not? Yet to-day she did not ask herself the question confidently. It belonged still to the limbo of the future--to the convenient "some day" to which her thought had always banished it. Since she had grown she had never felt for any one the sentiment she had dreamed of in that vivid girlhood of hers, a something mixed of pride and joy, that a sound or touch would thrill with a delight as keen as pain; but unconsciously, perhaps, she had been clinging to old romantic notions.