From the wide verandah, built out on piles over the terrace, there was an uninterrupted view of the harbour. He climbed the four wooden stairs and on the top step turned and looked again down on to the bay. The yacht was now invisible, but in his mind he followed her slipping down toward the open sea. And Atherton—what were his thoughts while pacing the broad deck or lying in his cabin listening to the screw whose every revolution was taking him nearer the centre of his earthly happiness? Were they anything like his own, he wondered, as he stood there bareheaded in the moonlight, looking strangely big and incongruous on the balcony of the little fairylike doll's house?
He shrugged impatiently. The comparison was an insult, he thought bitterly. Again he stared out to sea, straining his eyes; trying vainly to pick up the yacht's lights far down the bay. It was very still, a tiny breeze whispered in the pines and drifted across his face the sweet perfume of a flowering shrub. A cicada chirped in the grass at his feet.
Then behind him came a faint rustle of silk. He heard the soft sibilant sound of a breath drawn quickly in.
“Will my lord honourably be pleased to enter?” the voice was very low and sweet and the English very slow and careful.
Craven did not move.
“Try again, O Hara San.”
A low bubble of girlish laughter rippled out.
“Please to come in, Bar-ree.”
He turned slowly, looking bigger than ever by contrast with the slender little Japanese girl who faced him. She was barely seventeen, dainty and fragile as a porcelain figure, wholly in keeping with her exquisite setting and yet the flush on her cheeks—free from the thick disfiguring white paste used by the women of her country—and the vivid animation of her face were oddly occidental, and the eyes raised so eagerly to Craven's were as grey as his own.
He held out his arms and she fluttered into them with a little breathless murmur, clinging to him passionately.