"I am a very wicked woman!"
"No—no; anything but that," he said, and stooping kissed her thin, frail hand.
Something choked him at the heart and blinded his eyes as he left her, and all the way back to his office, in the jinrikisha, he kept thinking of the girl's white, suffering face, and memories of the gay, happy, careless Cleo he had known in America mingled with it in his thoughts in a frightful medley. Something like remorse crept into his own heart; for was he entirely blameless? But he forgot everything painful when he arrived home, for there was a perfume-scented little note written on thin rice-paper, waiting for him, and Numè was expecting him that day. When one has present happiness, it is not hard to forget the sorrows of others.
CHAPTER LVIII. MRS. DAVIS'S NERVES.
The next day Sinclair brought Cleo to call on Numè. It was the first time the two girls had ever really talked with each other. At first Numè declared she would not see the American girl, whom she held responsible for her father's, Sachi's and Orito's deaths, but after Sinclair had talked to her for a while and had told her how the other girl was suffering, and how she, after all, really loved Orito, the girl's tender little heart was touched, and she was as anxious to see Cleo as Cleo was to see her.
She went herself down the little garden path to meet Cleo, and held her two little hands out with a great show of cordiality and almost affection.
"Tha's so perlite thad you cummin' to see me," she said.