[Japanese: Donto]
Through the thin paper pane, parted by his moistened finger, Ware's hot,
hollow eyes saw the Japanese girl come into the room. She had not waited
to shut the _shoji_ behind her. She drew quick sobbing breaths and her
eyes had the desperate look of a hunted animal. She ran into the
sleeping apartment and closed its _shikiri_.
Barbara had halted at the doorway. As she stood looking in, her eyes
fell on the mauve _kimono_ with its silver camelias. It was the robe
Haru had worn the first evening she came to her. If she had doubted, all
doubt was now gone. An instant she hesitated, then, with sudden
resolution, knocked on the grill and stepped across the threshold.
The man who watched could not solve the puzzle, but in that instant the
sick suspicion he had harbored became a cold and lifeless thing in his
breast. A sense of shame rushed through him as he saw her gaze wander
about the interior with its veneer of the foreign: to the disordered
desk--the lounge and its litter of books--the photograph on the
wall--the open panel with its champagne bottles. In her glance distaste
had grown to a quick question. The coarse suggestions of the place were
welling over her. Whose house was this? Had Haru seen her and was she
hiding from her?
Suddenly she saw the man's cap and gauntlet in the corner. Her cheeks
rushed into flame. She seemed to see Haru's innocent face smiling at her
over the throbbing _samisen_ and through its tones to hear again the
echo of a ribald laugh before the gilded cages of the Yoshiwara.
Something in her cried out against the inference. All at once she took
an abrupt step forward. She was looking at the round glass lantern just
outside the doorway, painted with three characters:
[Japanese: Donto]
She chilled as if ether had been poured in her veins. The name they
stood for had been her first lesson in Japanese--_which Haru had taught
her_! She snatched up one of the volumes from the chair. It was
Lillienthal's _Conquest of the Air_. She opened it to the title page.
Ware, watching, saw with surprise that she was trembling violently. She
had grown pale to the lips. The book slipped from her fingers and
crashed on to the _tatamé_. It lay there, open as she had held it, and
he saw what was written across the white leaf. It was Daunt's name.
His thought leaped as if at the flick of a lash. Daunt's book! What was
she thinking? The piteous pallor that swept her face like an icy wave
answered him. Why she was there--her interest in this Japanese girl who
fled from her--he could not guess. But it was clear that she had not
known the house was Daunt's, and that with the knowledge, she was face
to face with what must seem a damning complicity. Perhaps some hint of
this retreat had come to her--he knew how gossip feathered its
shafts!--some covert allusion, some laughing _oui-dire_, to which her
coming had now given such verity. Phil was the _deus ex machina_ of the
situation. His Japanese _amour_ she was now laying at Daunt's door! All
this flashed through his mind in an instant. He watched her intently.
Over Barbara was sweeping a hideous chaos of mocking voices, bits of
recollection barbed with agony. The little house near Aoyama
parade-ground--the carriage had passed the great empty plaza a few
moments ago--that he had kept from "sentiment"! The house she had asked
him to show her, when he had evaded the request. And Haru! A feeling of
physical anguish like that of death came to her; a dull pain was in her
temples and the floor seemed to be rising up with her toward the
ceiling. Daunt? He whose lips had lain on hers, whose letter was in her
bosom--it burned her flesh now like a live coal! "There has never been
another woman to me, Barbara. There never will be!" The words seemed to
launch themselves from the air, stinging like fiery javelins.
Behind the _shikiri_, a weird, malevolent clamor was shouting through
Ware's brain. He stood alone with his temptation. What had he to do with
Daunt, or with her belief in him? She had accepted his own advances,
beckoned him half around the world--for what? To discard him for this
man whom she had known but a handful of days! Chance had arranged this
_mise en scène_. Was he to tell her the truth--and lose her? The key to
the situation was in his hand. He had only to keep silence!
At that moment he felt crumble down in some crude gulf within the fabric
of his self-esteem--the high-built structure of years. Something colder,
formless and malignant, came to sit on its riven foundations. A savage
elation grew in him.
Suddenly a _shikiri_ was flung aside. Haru stood there, her face deathly
pale, her hands wrenching and tearing at her sleeves. She laughed, a
high, gasping, unnatural treble.
"So-o-o, _Ojo-San_! You come make visiting--_né_? The shrill voice rang
through the silent room. "My new house now, an' mos' bes' master. No
more Christian! My bad--oh, ve-ree bad Japan girl!" With another peal of
laughter she pointed to the knot of her _obi_. It was tied in front.
Barbara ran down the garden path as if pursued. She stepped into the
carriage blindly. The _Fox-Woman_! Votary of the Fox-God, at whose
candle-lighted shrine she had refused tribute!
This, then, was the end. It came to her like the striking of a great
bell. To-morrow the streets would lie as vivid in the sunlight, the
buglers would march as blithely, the bent pines would wave, the
lotos-pads in the moat glisten, the gorgeous _geisha_ flash by: she
alone would know that the sun had died in the blue heaven!
"Home, Taka," she said, and leaned back and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Behind her Haru's laughter had broken suddenly. She rushed into the
little sleeping-room and threw herself on the _tatamé_ before the tiny
image of Kwan-on, in a wild burst of sobbing.
Ware opened the _shikiri_ softly, and with noiseless step, passed out of
the house.