"What has happened—who has happened, Barbara?" he asked, for he suddenly guessed he knew what that look meant.
Her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "I don't know—do you?"
He took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morning newspaper. It chronicled the arrival of the yacht Barbara.
She looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter:
"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages——'"
"But not Ware?" he finished. "All right. He'll speak for himself, no doubt. The paper says he's at Nara; but then, he doesn't know you are here yet. We pushed our sailing date forward, you remember."
"I'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "Meanwhile, I can't tell you what a good time I'm having. I shall stay in Japan for ever: I can feel it in my bones! I shall have a Japanese house with a chaperon, two tailless cats and an amah, and study the three systems of flower-arrangement and the Tea-Ceremony."
They had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentry now stood. "He wears the uniform of the Imperial Guard," the bishop said. "That is the residence of one of the daughters of the Emperor."
He turned into the lane that opened opposite. It was hedged with some unfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little way inside stood an old temple gate with a stone torii. She stopped with an exclamation.
"Yes," he said, "there is the Chapel."