The girl finished crumbling the wafer to the carp, and watched them for a time as their grotesque mouths mechanically opened and shut upon the sinking flakes. Then she turned her eyes across the lake and embraced the prospect which Caswell had been absorbing when interrupted by her coming. Presently an idea moved her, and from a little bag she produced a gold pencil and a bit of paper and found a smooth place upon the rail. She wrote a few words, took a pin from her dress and fastened the paper to a post as if for a sign to persons coming out of the temple. She glanced quickly up, and seeing no one, slipped away around the end of the balcony.
When she was out of sight, Caswell’s eyes went back to his book of verses, but they carried no impressions from the page to his brain. The thoughts which had been aroused were insistent. They possessed him and he sat and battled with them. He was distracted from his reverie by the fluttering of the paper on the pin. A warm breeze had awakened and came in mimic gales which rippled the pools and set the bamboos on the farther bank in a silver shimmer. After the pin had resisted several onslaughts, a stronger air loosed it and sent the paper fluttering into the water.
Almost before it fell Caswell was on his feet. Then he checked himself. “It is not my business,” he thought. “Shall I interfere with the course of Fate?” He sat down. Then he rose again. “But perhaps I am the minister of Fate.” He leaned over the rail. The paper was slowly sinking, but he read under the clear water, “I am going to walk. Do you want to come?”
The young man’s stick was lying on the balcony. He took it and leaning over the rail fished up the wet paper. As he put his hand upon it, he heard a footfall, and turning saw the big lieutenant coming out of the temple. He had turned in time to catch the youth’s expression, as he perceived that the girl was not there.
“Oh!” said the youth, awkwardly. He saw that something had happened.
Caswell bowed in the Japanese manner, sucking his breath as if to a superior, and extended the dripping paper with the inscrutable countenance which the East had taught him.
The youth read it at a glance. “Thank you! Thank you, very much!” he said, impulsively; then remembering himself, he repeated his thanks in Japanese: “Arigato! Arigato! I understand,” he said, in answer to Caswell’s gesture toward the water. “The wind blew it in. You were very good.” He repeated the Japanese word again and bowed, and Caswell, bowing solemnly, backed off the balcony and left him.
“It was best so,” he thought, when he was on the path by the edge of the water.
He had come to the priest’s apartments, the little palace where the great Shogun had lived in his retirement, before he was conscious whither his steps were taking him. His thoughts were across eight thousand miles of sea. He looked around him with a start. “Shall I go in?” he said to himself. One of the priests, although of a different sect, was his friend. On the porch, a temple student saluted him. He was known because he often came, not only to talk with his friend, but to study the screens of Kano Tan Yu and Jakuchu, and the marvelous folding screens painted by Korin and Soami, and the kakemonos by those other ancient masters, Cho Densi and Shubun and Eishin.
He took the student’s welcome as an omen and slipped off his sandals. He was ushered in and, after saluting his friend, the temple tea was brought and they sat with it between them and discoursed. The temple tea was not as other tea, but superior. It was a powder made of the tenderest of the young leaves of certain choice plants. It possessed the secret flavors of spring, and the property of making the mind glow and the brain crystal clear without racking the nerves.