CHAPTER XLIII. THE TRUTH OF THE PROVERB.
It was with a heart full of yearning and love that Sinclair waited for Numè the next day. She was late; or was it that that last look of hers had turned his head so that he had come earlier than usual to the spot, unable to wait the appointed time?
He found himself planning their future together. How he would love her—his bright tropic flower, his pure shining star—his singing bird. Every leaf that stirred startled him. He tried to absorb himself in the beauty of the country, but his restlessness at her failure to come caused him to go constantly to the road and see if there were any signs of her.
At last he heard the faint, unmistakable beat, beat, beat of sandaled runners. They started his blood throbbing wildly through his veins. She was coming—the woman he loved, the dear little woman who had told him she loved him—not in words—but with that last parting, sweet look; and oh! Numè was too sweet, too genuine, too pure, to deceive.
As he helped her from the jinrikisha and looked at her with all his pent-up longing and eagerness, she turned her head aside with a constrained look. Koto stayed close by her, and refused to take any suggestion from Sinclair to leave them alone together.
Numè began to talk hastily, and as though she could not wait.
"We have had lots of fon, Mr. Sinka?"
"Fun!—why, Numè!"
She opened her little fan and shaded her face a moment.
"Ess—Numè and all Japanese girl luf to have fon."
"Numè—I don't like that word. It is inapplicable in our case."
He tried to take her hand in his, but it clung persistently to her fan, while the other remained hidden in the folds of her robe.
"My little girl is quite cross," he said, thinking she was trying to tease him.
"No! Numè nod mos' vaery cross;" after a moment she added, in a hard voice: "Numè does nod want to have any more fon." She clung to that word persistently.
"You do not want any more fun, Numè!" he repeated, slowly; "I don't understand you."
"Ess—it is all fon," she said. "All fon thad we pretending to luf."
"All fun?" he echoed, stupidly. "What is all fun, Numè? Why, what is the matter, sweetheart—why so contrary to-day?"
"Nosing is madder 'cept that Numè does nod wand any more fon with you—she tired vaery much of Mr. Sinka."
A silence, tragic in its feeling, passed between them.
"What do you mean, Numè?" He was still stupid.
"That I only have fon to pretend that I luf you—I am very tired now."
A gray pallor had stolen over the man's face.
"You—you are trying to jest with me, Numè," he said unsteadily.
The truth began to dawn on him gradually. He remembered his doubts of the former day. He had been deceived in her after all! Oh! fool that he was to have trusted her—and now—now he had not thought himself capable of such fierce love—yet he loved her in spite of her deceit, her falsity.
He got up and stood back a little way from her, leaning against a tree and looking down at her where she sat. A sudden wild sense of loss swept over him. Then his voice returned—it was muffled and unfamiliar even to his own ears.
"Numè!" was all he said; but he stretched his arms toward her with such yearning and pain that the girl rose suddenly and ran blindly from him, Koto following. On, and on, to where the jinrikisha was waiting. Koto helped, almost lifted her bodily in, and as the runner started down the road, Numè put her head back against Koto and quietly fainted away.
When she came to herself she was in a high fever. She called pitifully for Sinclair, begging Koto to take her to him—to go to him and tell him that she did not mean what she had said; that she was trying to help Mrs. Davis; that she loved only him, and a thousand other pitiful messages. But Mrs. Davis had her carried to her house and stood at her bedside, invincible as Fate.
Sinclair remained where she had left him for some time, the same dazed expression on his face. When the girl had darted from the fallen tree on which they had sat, she had dropped something in her flight. Mechanically he stooped and picked it up. It was a Japanese-American primer. Numè and he had studied out of it together. He ground his teeth with wild pain, but he threw the book from him as if it had been poison. He ran his hand through his hair, tried to think a moment, and then sat down on the fallen tree, his face in his hands.
There Taylor and Shiku came across him, sitting alone, looking out at the smooth, scintillating waters of the Hayama.
"Had a sunstroke, old man?" Taylor asked.
"No;" he rose abruptly to his feet. "I—I was just thinking, Taylor—just thinking—thinking of—of what you had told me a month or so ago. Do you remember—it was about Japanese women?"
"Er—yes, about them having no heart. Remember we decided the poet—or fool, we called him—was wrong."
"He was wrong only about the flower, Taylor."