They were in the midst of a densely packed crowd where a native theater was pouring its audience into the street. They had fallen behind the rest, and there were about them only kimono'd shoulders and flowered, blue-black head-dresses. He made a way for her ruggedly toward a paling where there was a little space. Above it was hung a poster of a Japanese actress.
"That is the famous Sada Gozen," he told her. "She has just returned from a season in Paris and New York, and Tokyo is quite wild about her."
As he spoke numbers thrust him against her and the touch brought instantly to him that moment in the garden when he had held her in his arms to lift her to the arbor ledge. The picture of her that evening in the pagoda was stamped on his heart: the sweet, moon-lighted profile, the curling, brown hair, the faint perfume of her gown that mingled with the wistaria. It came before him there in the bustle and press with a sudden swift sadness. He knew that it would be always with him to remember.
A Japanese couple, hastening to their rick'sha, caromed against them, and, with an effort, he tried to turn it to a smile:
"Some say it's difficult for a foreigner to come into intimate contact with the Japanese," he said. "You have already pierced that illusion. One is always finding out that he has been mistaken in people."
Her quivering feeling grasped at a fancied innuendo. "It doesn't take long, then, you think?" Her tone held a dangerous lure, but he did not perceive it.
"Not where you are concerned, apparently," he answered lightly.
She turned her head swiftly toward him, and her eyes flashed. "Where I am concerned!" she repeated fiercely, and in his astonishment he almost wrecked the paling. "Oh, I hate double-meaning! Why not say it? Do you suppose I don't know what you are thinking?"
"I?" he said in bewilderment. "What I am thinking?"
"You mean you have found you are mistaken in me! You have no right—no earthly right, to draw conclusions."