Barbara came on Daunt in the middle of the block. He had stationed himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser stature of the native crowds. With him was a Japanese boy who, she noted with surprise, was Ito, one of the house-servants. Her heart jumped as she saw the relief spring to Daunt's anxious face.
"Mea culpa!" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her hand to him. "What a trouble I have been to you! I was actually lost. Isn't it absurd?"
Her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. All his heart had leaped to meet them. In the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but since then it had been given him partly to understand. His thoughtless words—blunderer that he was!—had seemed to carp at her like a whining school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! Yet to his memory even her hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were golden, and Tokyo once more fairy-land.
"What will the others say!" she said. "They will have missed us long ago."
"We will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. We can get rick'sha at the next stand."
"What did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you found I had vanished into thin air?"
"I imagined for a while you were punishing me. Then I guessed you had somehow turned into the side street. But I felt that you would find your way back, so—I waited."
"Thank you," she said softly. "I have not acted so badly since I was a child. Are you going to shrive me?"
"I am the one to ask that of you," he replied.
"No—no! It is I. I must do penance. What is it to be?"