“This is Doctor Norne’s daughter, is it not?” she inquired in a pleasant voice. “Yes, I am Tressa Norne.... I ask your pardon.... Thank you, madam:—I am—I seem to be—a trifle dazed——” “What wonder, you poor child! Come to us if you feel need of companionship.” “You are very kind.... I seem to wish to be alone, somehow.” “I understand.... Good-night, my dear.” Late the next morning Tressa Norne awoke, conscious for the first time in four years that it was at last her own familiar self stretched out there on the pillows where sunshine streamed through the porthole. All that day she lay in her bamboo steamer chair on deck. Sun and wind conspired to dry every tear that wet her closed lashes. Her dark, glossy hair blew about her face; scarlet tinted her full lips again; the tense hands relaxed. Peace came at sundown. That evening she took her Yu-kin from her cabin and found a chair on the deserted hurricane deck. And here, in the brilliant moonlight of the China Sea, she curled up cross-legged on the deck, all alone, and sounded the four futile strings of her moon-lute, and hummed to herself, in a still voice, old songs she had sung in Yian before the tragedy. She sang the tent-song called _Tchinguiz_. She sang _Camel Bells_ and _The Blue Bazaar_,—children’s songs of the Yiort. She sang the ancient Khiounnou song called “The Saghalien”: _I_ _In the month of Saffar_ _Among the river-reeds_ _I saw two horsemen_ _Sitting on their steeds._ _Tulugum!_ _Heitulum!_ _By the river-reeds_ _II_ _In the month of Saffar_ _A demon guards the ford._ _Tokhta, my Lover!_ _Draw your shining sword!_ _Tulugum!_ _Heitulum!_ _Slay him with your sword!_ _III_ _In the month of Saffar_ _Among the water-weeds_ _I saw two horsemen_ _Fighting on their steeds._ _Tulugum!_ _Heitulum!_ _How my lover bleeds!_ _IV_ _In the month of Saffar,_ _The Year I should have wed—_ _The Year of The Panther—_ _My lover lay dead,—_ _Tulugum!_ _Heitulum!_ _Dead without a head._ And songs like these—the one called “Keuke Mongol,” and an ancient air of the Tchortchas called “The Thirty Thousand Calamities,” and some Chinese boatmen’s songs which she had heard in Yian before the tragedy; these she hummed to herself there in the moonlight playing on her round-faced, short-necked lute of four strings. Terror indeed seemed ended for her, and in her heart a great overwhelming joy was welling up which seemed to overflow across the entire moonlit world. She had no longer any fear; no premonition of further evil. Among the few Americans and English aboard, something of her story was already known. People were kind; and they were also considerate enough to subdue their sympathetic curiosity when they discovered that this young American girl shrank from any mention of what had happened to her during the last four years of the Great World War.