"Numè!" was all he said; but he stretched his arms toward her with such yearning and pain that the girl rose suddenly and ran blindly from him, Koto following. On, and on, to where the jinrikisha was waiting. Koto helped, almost lifted her bodily in, and as the runner started down the road, Numè put her head back against Koto and quietly fainted away.
When she came to herself she was in a high fever. She called pitifully for Sinclair, begging Koto to take her to him—to go to him and tell him that she did not mean what she had said; that she was trying to help Mrs. Davis; that she loved only him, and a thousand other pitiful messages. But Mrs. Davis had her carried to her house and stood at her bedside, invincible as Fate.
Sinclair remained where she had left him for some time, the same dazed expression on his face. When the girl had darted from the fallen tree on which they had sat, she had dropped something in her flight. Mechanically he stooped and picked it up. It was a Japanese-American primer. Numè and he had studied out of it together. He ground his teeth with wild pain, but he threw the book from him as if it had been poison. He ran his hand through his hair, tried to think a moment, and then sat down on the fallen tree, his face in his hands.
There Taylor and Shiku came across him, sitting alone, looking out at the smooth, scintillating waters of the Hayama.
"Had a sunstroke, old man?" Taylor asked.
"No;" he rose abruptly to his feet. "I—I was just thinking, Taylor—just thinking—thinking of—of what you had told me a month or so ago. Do you remember—it was about Japanese women?"
"Er—yes, about them having no heart. Remember we decided the poet—or fool, we called him—was wrong."
"He was wrong only about the flower, Taylor."