"Yes. How much you have learned already!"
"Haru has begun teaching me. Let me show you my proficiency." She took his pencil and wrote:
ドント
"There! who would guess that was Japanese for 'Daunt.' And what an impression you must have made on Haru for her to select your name as my first lesson!"
Across the soft shoo-shoo of spotless, tabi-clad feet, the flitting of bright-hued kimono, the gay badinage that flew about the low tables, Daunt felt her beauty thrill him from head to foot like a garment of mist and fire. As she dropped her hand to the cushion it had touched his, and for an instant their pulses had seemed to throb into one. The tiny, lacquered cup she took up trembled in her fingers.
She started when the young army officer nearest her said: "Speaking of sailing, give me a steam-yacht like the one that berthed yesterday at Yokohama. She belongs to a man named Ware—Austen Ware—a New Yorker, I understand. Perhaps you know him, Miss Fairfax."
"I have met him," she answered.
The young army officer looked up quickly—he was an enthusiastic yachtsman. "A beautiful vessel!" he said. "I noticed her to-day, but she was too far away to make out her name."
"It is the Barbara," said Voynich.
"Why—" exclaimed Patricia, "that's—" She bit her tongue, caught by something in Barbara's face. "Good gracious!" she ended. "My—my foot's asleep!"