The girl had answered with half-quivering lip: "Neither of us is poor now, Arthur;" and Sinclair had answered, hastily, "Yes, but I had better make a place in the world for myself first—get established, you see, dear. We don't need to hurry. We have lots of time yet."
Cleo had remained silent.
"When I am settled I will send for you to join me, dear," Sinclair had added, "if you are willing to come."
"Willing!" she had answered, with indignant passion. "Oh, Arthur, I am willing to go anywhere where you are."
Her mother's illness, soon after this, absorbed Cleo for a time, so that when Sinclair left her, the date of their marriage still remained unsettled.
That was three years before. Since then the girl had kept up an almost constant correspondence with Sinclair. His letters were like him, tender and loving, almost boyish in their tone of joyousness, for Sinclair liked his new home and position so much that he wanted to remain there altogether. He wrote to Cleo, asking if she would not now come to Japan and judge for them, and if she liked the country they would live there altogether; if not—they would return to America.
The girl's pride had long been roused in her, and but for her love for Sinclair she might have given him up long before. But always the overmastering love she had for him kept her waiting, waiting on for him—waiting for him to send for her as he had promised he would. It is true, she had grown used to his absence, and often tried to console herself with the homage and love given by others, but it could not be—her heart turned always back to the man she had loved from the first, and even the little flirtations she indulged in were half-hearted. Sometimes Sinclair's letters showed a trace of haste and carelessness, often they were almost cold and perfunctory. At such times she would plunge into a round of reckless gayety, and try to forget for the time being her unsatisfied longing and love. And now she was on her way to join him. The voyage was long, and would have been tedious had it not been for Takashima. He gave her a new interest. Most of the other passengers she found uninteresting. Sinclair's last letters, although speaking of her trip, and seemingly urging her to come, appeared to her, sometimes, almost forced. The girl's proud, spoiled heart rebelled. It was with a feeling as much of hunger for sympathy and love, as of coquetry, that she had started her acquaintance with Takashima, and now as she lay in the narrow little couch in her room, she was asking her heart with a sudden fear whether her hunger for love had overpowered her. She was of a passionate, intense nature. It galled her always that she was separated from the man she loved,—that she could not at once have by her the love he had protested he felt for her. She buried her face in the pillows and sobbed bitterly. With a passionate nervousness, she thrust his picture away from her, and tried to think, instead, of Takashima, the gentle young Japanese who now loved her—not as Sinclair had done, with a passion of a moment that swept her from her feet, but with deference and respect, and yet with as strong a love as she could have desired.