"No! No! No!" cried Mara, with shining eyes and an alert manner. "I never grow weary of hearing about Japan." "Why?" asked the Count, half-closing his eyes. Mara's face became strange and cold. "I don't know," she said, in a hesitating manner. "I seem to know Japan." "But, Mara," cried Basil, staring, "you have never been there!" "All the same I know it, and especially I know the Temple of Kitzuki." "Ah! but you _were_ there!" put in Theodore, glancing at the Count, whose eyes were curiously intent upon the girl's pale face. "How? When?" he asked suddenly. "She went in her astral body in search for the Mikado Jewel, and----" "Don't talk of these things," interrupted Mara, in an angry tone. "The Count doesn't want to hear such rubbish." "Of course; it is all rubbish," said Akira promptly; but Patricia, mindful of his afternoon conversation, did not believe that he spoke as he felt. "Ah!" sneered Theodore quietly, "you are one of the scoffers. Yet I thought that the East believed in such things." "We believe in much we never talk about," replied Akira calmly. Then there was a pause, until he suddenly produced from his pocket a bamboo flute. "I can play this," he said, with his eyes on Mara, as though he addressed himself to her; "it is a simple Japanese instrument. Have you a drum?" Basil, who was addressed, laughed. "I don't think so. There's the dinner-gong." "That will do," said Akira serenely. "Would you mind getting it and beating it rhythmically like a tom-tom--softly, of course, so as not to drown the notes of my flute. And a hand-bell," he added, casting his looks round the room. "You are arranging an orchestra," laughed Basil, going out to fetch the gong. "Here is a bell!" cried Mara, taking a small silver hand-bell from a table covered with nicknacks. "Hold it, please." "But what am I to do with it?" asked the girl, bewildered. "The music I play will tell you," said Akira, somewhat grimly, and then Patricia began to see that there was some meaning in all this preparation. More, that the same was in some hidden way connected with Mara. However, she said nothing, but waited events. Presently Basil, tall and slim, returned, carrying the brazen gong and sat down to flourish the stick. "Punch and Judy," said Basil; "now for it." Akira said nothing. He looked at Patricia and Theodore, who were staring at him with astonishment, and at Basil laughing over the gong, and finally at Mara, who held the hand-bell and appeared puzzled. Suddenly the Japanese rose from his seat, and, crossing to the fire, threw something into it. Immediately a thick white smoke poured into the room, and a strong perfume came to Patricia's nostrils, which seemed to be familiar. "The incense of Moses," she heard Theodore mutter; "hang it, the fellow does know something of these things!"