"He—died here?"
"In Nagasaki. My mother went back to America, and there I was born."
She was looking out across the wide space where the roofs sank out of sight—to the foliaged slope of Aoyama. Suddenly a thrill, a curiously complex motion, ran over her. Above those far tree-tops, sailing in slow, sweeping, concentric circles, she saw a great machine, like a gigantic vulture. She knew instantly what it was, and there flashed before her the memory of a day at Fort Logan when a brave young lieutenant had crashed to death before her eyes in a shattered aëroplane.
If Daunt were to fall ... what would it mean to her! In that instant the garden about her, Thorn, the blue sky above, faded, and she stared dismayed into a gulf in whose shadows lurked the disastrous, the terrifying, the irreparable. "I love him! I love him!"—it seemed to peal like a temple-bell through her brain. Even to herself she could never deny it again!
She became aware of music near at hand. It brought her back to the present, for it was the sound of the organ in the new Chapel across the way.
Looking up, she was struck by the expression on Thorn's face. He seemed, listening, to be held captive by some dire recollection. It brought to her mind that bitter cry:
"I can not but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me!"
She rose with a sudden swelling of the throat.
"I must go now," she said. "The Chapel is to be dedicated this morning. The organ is playing for the service now."
She led the way along the stepping-stones to the bamboo gate. As they approached, through the interstices of the farther hedge she could see the figure of the Ambassador, with Mrs. Dandridge, among the kimono entering the chapel door. In the temple across the yard the baton had begun its tapping and the dulled, monotonous tom-tom mingled weirdly with the soaring harmonies of the organ.