He stopped. She had caught her hand to her throat with a wild gesture. "Ben-ten! She—she is frowning at us! There—look there!"
"My poor darling!" he said. "You are nervous. See, it was only the shadow! I ought not to have brought you into this dismal hole! You are positively shivering."
"Let us hurry," she said, and they went quickly into the warmer air and light of the entrance.
The squall had passed with the fateful swiftness of its coming. The waves still gurgled and tumbled, but the fury of the wind was over. The murk light had lifted, showing the wet sky a patchy drab, which again was beginning to show glimpses of golden hue.
They walked back to Haru at the tea-house, beneath the wild, poignant beauty of disheveled cryptomeria, echoing once more the eternal song of the semi—along paths strewn with drenched petals and sweet with the moist scents of sodden leaves—then together, down the steep, templed hill and across the planked walk to the mainland, where a trolley buzzed through the springing rice-fields, musical now with the mé kayui—mé kayui of the frogs. Daunt accompanied them to the through line of the railway. From there he was to return to Kamakura for the answer to his letter.
The sun was setting when the Tokyo express pulled into the station. As Haru disappeared into the compartment, Daunt took Barbara's hand to help her to the platform. There had been no other first-class passengers to embark and the forward end of the asphalt was deserted. Her lovely, flushed face was turned toward him, and there in the dusk of the station, he bent swiftly and kissed her once more on the lips.
"Dearest, dearest!" he said behind his teeth, and turned quickly away.
In the car, as the train fled through the glory of the sunset, Barbara closed her eyes, the longer to keep the impression of that eager gaze: the lithe, muscular poise of the strong frame, the parted lips, the brown hair curling under the peak of the cloth cap. She tried to imagine him on his backward journey. Now the trolley had passed the rice-fields, now he was striding along the shore road toward Kamakura, where the great bronze Buddha was lifting its face of dreamless calm. Now, perhaps, he was turning back toward the deepening blur of the green island. She shivered a little as she remembered the frown that had seemed to rest on the stony countenance of Ben-ten in her cave.
Her thought drifted into to-morrow, when she was to give him her answer. Ah, she knew what that answer would be! She thought of the telegram of the night before, which she had read in the candle-lighted street! To-morrow Ware also was coming—for an answer! She knew what that would be, too. She felt a sudden pity for him. Yet she knew now—what wisdom she had gained in these two swift days!—that his was not the love that most deserved it. Daunt's parting kiss clung to her lips like a living flower. The hand he had clasped still burned to his touch; she lifted it and held it against her hot face, while the darkening carriage seemed to fill with the dank smell of salty wind and seaweed, mingled with his voice: