Daunt was crying out upon himself for a fool. What right had he to feel that hot sting in his heart? Yesterday morning he had not known that she existed. If an hour ago the skies had been golden-sprinkled azure, and Tokyo the capital of an Empire of Romance, it was only because he was a boyish, silly dolt, sick with vanity and complacency. What had there been between them, after all, save a light camaraderie into which a man was an insufferable cad to read more? So he paced on, achingly cognizant of the lapses in his conversation, quite unconscious that her own was growing more forced and strained. They were in the midst of a densely packed crowd where a native theater was pouring its audience into the street. They had fallen behind the rest, and there were about them only _kimono'd_ shoulders and flowered, blue-black head-dresses. He made a way for her ruggedly toward a paling where there was a little space. Above it was hung a poster of a Japanese actress. "That is the famous Sada Gozen," he told her. "She has just returned from a season in Paris and New York, and Tokyo is quite wild about her." As he spoke numbers thrust him against her and the touch brought instantly to him that moment in the garden when he had held her in his arms to lift her to the arbor ledge. The picture of her that evening in the pagoda was stamped on his heart: the sweet, moon-lighted profile, the curling, brown hair, the faint perfume of her gown that mingled with the wistaria. It came before him there in the bustle and press with a sudden swift sadness. He knew that it would be always with him to remember. A Japanese couple, hastening to their _rick'sha_, caromed against them, and, with an effort, he tried to turn it to a smile: "Some say it's difficult for a foreigner to come into intimate contact with the Japanese," he said. "You have already pierced that illusion. One is always finding out that he has been mistaken in people." Her quivering feeling grasped at a fancied innuendo. "It doesn't take long, then, you think?" Her tone held a dangerous lure, but he did not perceive it. "Not where you are concerned, apparently," he answered lightly. She turned her head swiftly toward him, and her eyes flashed. "Where _I_ am concerned!" she repeated fiercely, and in his astonishment he almost wrecked the paling. "Oh, I hate double-meaning! Why not say it? Do you suppose I don't know what you are thinking?" "I?" he said in bewilderment. "What _I_ am thinking?" "You mean you have found you are mistaken in _me_! You have no right--no earthly right, to draw conclusions." "Ah!" he said, with a sharp breath. "I had no such meaning. You can't imagine--" "Don't say you didn't," she interrupted. "That only makes it worse!" She scarcely understood her own resentment, and a hot consciousness that her behavior was quite childish and unreasonable mixed itself with her anger.