Sinclair pushed aside the shoji and passed into the room.
Numè raised her head languidly at the opening of the screens. At first she thought she was dreaming, and she sat up straight on the little couch on which she had been resting. Suddenly Sinclair was beside her, and had taken her bodily into his arms.
"Numè! Numè!" he whispered;—and then, as she struggled faintly to be free, he said, blissfully, "Oh, I know the truth, little sweetheart, though it is too good for me to understand it yet. Koto has told me everything, and—and oh! Numè!" He kissed the wistful eyes rapturously.
He scarcely knew her, she had grown so quiet and sad. In the woods she had chattered constantly to him;—now, he could not make her say anything. But after a while, when Sinclair had chided her for her silence, she said, very shyly:
"Do you luf me, Mr. Sinka, bedder than the beautiful Americazan lady?"
Sinclair raised her little face between his two hands.
"Sweetheart—do you need to ask?" he said. "I have never loved any one but you."
The girl smiled—the first time she had smiled in weeks. Her two little hands met round his neck, she rose on tiptoe. "Numè lig' to kees with you," she said, artlessly. There is no need to tell what Sinclair answered.
When the shadows began to deepen, he and Numè still sat together on the small lounge, neither of them conscious of time or place. They were renewing their acquaintance with each other, and each was discovering new delights in the other.
It was Koto who broke in on them. She had been in the next room all the time, and had watched them through small peep-holes in the wall.