"Ah!" he said, with a sharp breath. "I had no such meaning. You can't imagine—"
"Don't say you didn't," she interrupted. "That only makes it worse!" She scarcely understood her own resentment, and a hot consciousness that her behavior was quite childish and unreasonable mixed itself with her anger.
"What have I said?" he exclaimed, in contrition and distress. "I wouldn't hurt you for a million worlds! Whatever it was, I ought to do hara-kiri for it! I—I will perform the operation whenever you say!"
A ridiculous desire to cry had seized her—why, she could not have told—and she would rather have died than have him see her do so. "If you will go ahead," she said tremulously, "and make a path for me, I think we can get through now."
He turned instantly and his broad shoulders parted the crowd in a haste that was thoroughly un-Japanese. But she did not follow him. Instead, she drew back, and thinking only to hide momentarily her hurt and her pride, slipped through a narrow gateway.
She found herself in a crowded corridor of the emptying playhouse. The mass of Japanese faces confused her. A door opened at another angle and she passed through it hastily into the open air. The street she was now in was narrow, and she followed it, expecting it to turn into the larger thoroughfare. It did so presently, and at its corner she paused till the burning had left her eyes, and her breath came evenly. Then she walked back toward the theater, feeling an impatient irritation at her behavior.
Presently, however, she stopped, puzzled. The theater was not there. The street, too, had not the character of the one in which she had left Daunt. She must have taken the wrong turn. She walked rapidly in the opposite direction, until another street crossed at right angles. This she tried with no better result. In the maze of lantern-lighted vistas, she was completely lost.
She was not frightened, for she was aware that, so far as physical harm was concerned, Tokyo, of all great cities of the world, was perhaps the safest and most orderly. She knew that "Bei-koku Taish'-kan" meant "American Embassy." She had mastered the phrase that morning, and had only to step into a rick'sha and use it. Daunt, however, did not know this. Aware that she had been behind him, he would not go on, and she contritely pictured him anxiously searching the crowds for her. The thought overrode her anger and humiliation. She would not take the rick'sha till she despaired of finding him.
Just before her, at the side of the way, stood a small temple with a recumbent stone fox at its entrance. It made her think suddenly of the riding-crop she had seen Daunt carrying, with its Damascene fox-head handle. In the doorway burned a rack of little candles, and a chest, barred across the top, sat ready to receive the offerings of worshipers. Above this was suspended the mirror which is the invariable badge of a Shinto shrine. It was tilted at an angle and tossed back the glimmer of the candle-flame. With a whimsical smile she took a copper coin from her purse and leaned to toss it into the chest.
But her fingers closed on it and she drew back hastily, with a quick memory of one of the tales Haru had told her in the garden. She knew suddenly that she stood before a temple of Inari, the Fox-God, patron deity of her whose conquests brought shame to households and dishonor to wives. She remembered a song the Japanese girl had sung to the tinkle of her samisen: