A sigh of ecstasy came from her lips, for it brought the land almost at arm's length--the stone _hatoba_ crowded with brown Japanese faces, pricked out here and there by the white Panama hat or pith-helmet of the foreigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribboned parasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting _rick'sha_,--the little flotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage--the stately, columned front of the club on the Bund with its cool terrace of round tables--the _kimono'd_ figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along the water-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailed beetle--farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue and beyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright, yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green from which cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. Arching over all the enormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery of the declining sun. It unfolded before her like a panorama--all the basking, many-hued, polyglot, half-tropical life--a colorful medley, queer and mysterious! Nearer, nearer yet, the ship drew on, till there came to meet it two curved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. The captain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the group of male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through the hawse-holes. Barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. The slow swinging of the vessel to the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and the shore, perilously near. She saw it now in its proper perspective--a trim steam yacht, painted white, with a rakish air of speed and tautness, the sun glinting from its polished brass fittings. It lay there, graceful and light, a sharp, clean contrast to the gray and yellow _junk_ and grotesque _sampan_, a disdainful swan amid a noisy flock of teal and mallard. Adjusting the focus Barbara looked. A man in naval uniform who had boarded the ship at Quarantine was pointing out the yacht to a passenger, and Barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "You see the patches of green?--they're decorations for the Squadron that's due to-morrow. Look just beyond them. Prettiest craft I've ever seen east of the Straits.... Came in this morning. Owner's in Nara now, doing the temples.... Has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, going the pace.... They won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'd go high and dry on empty champagne bottles." Barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. Puzzled, she withdrew her gaze, then looked once more. Suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "What are you going to do with that man?"--her uncle's query seemed to echo satirically about her. For the white yacht was Austen Ware's, and there, on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name BARBARA CHAPTER II