Yuki said she would speak with him but a minute, and the servant vanished. Almost immediately the manager appeared before her, frowning heavily. But at sight of her his face brightened wonderfully.

“Why, if it ain’t the girl I heard sing at the tea-garden!” he cried. “Come right inside.”

And he eagerly drew her, unresisting, within.

Two days later, on board the Yokohama Maru, Yuki left her native Japan.

As the ship weighed anchor, she closed her eyes and faintly clung to the guard-rail. All about her she could hear the passengers talking and laughing, a few were cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs to friends on shore. And long after the wharf was only a dim, shadowy outline she still clung there to the rail, her hands cold and tense.

Some one put an arm about her, and she started as though she had been struck.

“You are not ill already, you poor little thing?” said a woman’s clear, pleasing voice.

Yuki regarded her piteously. She dimly recognized in her the wife of her employer, and she struggled to regain her scattered wits, but vainly. She was only able to look up into the sympathetic face of the other with eyes which could not conceal the turbulent tragedy of her soul.

“Why, you are shivering all over, and are as cold as—Jimmy, come over here,” she turned and called peremptorily to her husband, who hastened forward, throwing his cigar overboard.