Cleo Ballard was a coquette; such an alluring, bright, sweet, dangerous coquette. She could not have counted her adorers, because they would have included every one who knew her. Such a gay, happy girl as she was; always looking about her for happiness, and finding it only in the admiration and adoration of her victims; for they were victims, after all, because, though they were generally willing to adore in the beginning, she nevertheless crushed their hopes in the end; for that is the nature of coquettes. Hers was a strange, paradoxical nature. She would put herself out, perhaps go miles out of her way, for the sake of a new adorer, one whose heart she knew she would storm, and then perhaps break. She would do this gayly, thoughtlessly, as unscrupulously and impetuously as she tore the little silk gloves from her hands because they came not off easily. And yet, in spite of this, it broke her heart (and, after all, she had a heart) to see the meanest, the most insignificant of creatures in pain or trouble. With a laugh she pulled the heart-strings till they ached with pain and pleasure commingled; but when the poor heart burst with the tension, then she would run shivering away, and hide herself, because so long as she did not see the pain she did not feel it. Who can analyze a coquette?
Then, too, she was very beautiful, as all coquettes are. She had sun-kissed, golden-brown hair,—dark brown at night and in the shadow, bright gold in the daytime and in the light. Her eyes were dark blue, sombre, gentle eyes at times, wicked, mischievous, mocking eyes at others. Of the rest of her face, you do not need to know, for when one is young and has wonderful eyes, shiny, wavy hair and even features, be sure that one is very beautiful.
Cleo Ballard was beautiful, with the charming, versatile, changeable, wholly fascinating beauty of an American girl—an American beauty.
And now she had a new admirer, perhaps a new—lover. He was so different from the rest. It had been an easy matter for her to play with and turn off her many American adorers, because most of them went into the game of hearts with their eyes open, and knew from the first that the girl was but playing with them. But how was she to treat one who believed every word she said, whether uttered gayly or otherwise, and who, in his gentle, undisguised way, did not attempt, even from the beginning, to hide from her the fact that he admired her so intensely?
Ever since the day Tom Ballard had introduced Takashima to her, he had been with her almost constantly. Among all the men, young and old, who paid her court on the steamer, she openly favored the Japanese. Most Japanese have their full share of conceit. Takashima was not lacking in this. It was pleasant for him to be singled out each day as the one the beautiful American girl preferred to have by her. It pleased him that she did not laugh or joke so much when with him, but often became even as serious as he, and he even enjoyed hearing her snub some of her admirers for his sake.
"Cleo," Tom Ballard said to her one day, as the Japanese left her side for a moment, "have mercy on Takashima; spare him, as thou wouldst be spared."
She flushed a trifle at the bantering words, and looked out across the sea.
"Why, Tom! he understands. Didn't you say he had lived eight years in America?"
Tom sighed. "Woman! woman! incorrigible, unanswerable creature!"
After a time Cleo said, almost pleadingly, as if she were trying to defend herself against some accusation: