"My thinks the Ojo-San must suffer through the center!"
Laughingly Barbara caught the other's slim wrist and drew her before the mirror. By oriental standards the Japanese girl was as finely bred as herself. In the two faces, both keenly delicate and sensitive, yet so sharply contrasted—one palely olive under its jetty pillow of straight black hair, the other fair and brown-eyed, crowned with curling gold—the extremes of East and West looked out at each other.
"See, Haru," said Barbara. "How different we are!"
"You so more good-look!" sighed the Japanese girl. "My jus' like the night."
"Ah, but a moonlighted night," cried Barbara, "soft and warm and full of secrets. When you have a sweetheart you will be far more lovely to him than any foreign girl could be!"
Haru blushed rosily. "Sweetheart p'r'aps now," she said, "—all same kind America story say 'bout."
"Have you really, Haru?" cried Barbara. "I love to hear about sweethearts. Maybe—some day—I may have one, too. Some time you'll tell me about him. Won't you?"
Suddenly, far below the window, there came a snarling scramble and a savage, menacing bay. Barbara leaned out. A tawny, long-muzzled wolf-hound, fastened to a stake, glared up at her out of red-dimmed eyes.
"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed. "He looks sick. Does he have to be tied up?"
The Japanese girl shivered. "Very bad dog," she said. "My think very danger to not kill."