"Nosing."
"I thought you had been making sly trips to Tokyo?"
"I was so lonely," the girl said, sadly.
"You ought to be very happy now—now that your marriage is assured."
"Numè is nod always habby," she answered, wistfully. "Sometimes I tell Mrs. Davees I am nod vaery, VAERY habby, an' she laf at me, tell me I donno how habby I am."
"But why are you not always happy?"
"I don't to understand. I thing' thad I want to—" she looked Sinclair in the face with serious, wistful eyes—"I thing' I want to be luf," she said.
Sinclair felt the blood rush to his head in a torrent at this strange, ingenuous confession. The girl's sweet face fascinated him strangely. He had thought of her constantly ever since he had met her. With her strange, foreign, half-wild beauty, she awakened in him all the slumbering passion of his nature, and at the same time, because of her sweetness, innocence and purity of heart, a finer sense of chivalry than he had ever felt before—a wish to protect her.
"You do not need to wish to be loved, Numè—every one who knows you must love you."
"Koto luf me," she said, "tha's all. My fadder vaery proud of me sometimes, an' thad I marry with Orito; Orito luf me a liddle, liddle bit—Mrs. Davees—vaery good friend—you——" she paused, looking at him questioningly. Then she added, shyly: