"Never a word. She died before I went to America again. She left me a letter which hinted at something wholly unforgivable--almost Satanic, it must have seemed to her." "And he?" "Disappeared. He was thought to have gone to China. Perhaps he is alive there yet. I have always wondered. If so, how is he living--in what way?" The bishop turned abruptly. "In view of what we know, can I lend myself to the dedication of this house of our Lord to a memory that may be infamous? I ask you as a friend." The older man was a long time silent. "'His ways are past finding out,'" he said at length. "I am conscious, sometimes, of a hidden purpose in things. The daughter's memory of her father is a beautiful thing. Let us not destroy it!" CHAPTER XX THE TRESPASSER The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended that afternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on its wide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty _kimono_ of pale gray cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japanese face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled from Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden under the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling. Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality--with her fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please. While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she had made the Japanese girl bring her _samisen_ and play. At first the music had seemed uncouth and elfish--a queer, barbaric twanging, like an intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals. But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner ear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding, her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in her pretty broken English, had told her stories--old legends that are embalmed in the _geisha_ dances, of the forty-seven _Ronin_, and of the great _Shogun_ who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park. * * * * * When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk--he was to show her the Chapel--the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the compound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables--each with the golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel--was just passing. Their occupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in naval uniform, their breasts covered with orders.