The bishop, and the Ambassador, when the former's call was ended that afternoon, found Barbara with Haru in the garden pagoda. She sat on its wide ledge, Haru at her feet, in a dainty kimono of pale gray cotton-crepe with a woven pattern of plum-blossoms. The oval Japanese face showed no trace now of the passionate anger with which she had fled from Phil's kisses. If it had left a trace the trace was hidden under the racial mask that habitually glosses the surface of oriental feeling.

Barbara had fallen in love with Haru's piquant personality—with her fragile loveliness, her quaint phrasing, her utter desire to please. While Patricia deepened her engaging freckles on the tennis court, she had made the Japanese girl bring her samisen and play. At first the music had seemed uncouth and elfish—a queer, barbaric twanging, like an intoxicated banjo with no bass string, tricked with unmelodious chirpings, and woven with extraordinary runs and unfamiliar intervals. But slowly, after the first few moments, there had crept to her inner ear a strange, errant rhythm. She had felt her feet stealthily gliding, her arms bending, with those of the score of listening children who at the first twittering of the strings, had crept from stables and servants' quarters like infant toads in a shower. Afterward Haru, in her pretty broken English, had told her stories—old legends that are embalmed in the geisha dances, of the forty-seven Ronin, and of the great Shogun who slept by the huge stone lanterns in Uyeno Park.

When Barbara and her uncle started on their walk—he was to show her the Chapel—the Ambassador strolled with them as far as the main gate of the compound. A string of carriages from the Imperial stables—each with the golden chrysanthemum on its lacquered panel—was just passing. Their occupants, some of whom were Japanese and some foreign, were in naval uniform, their breasts covered with orders.

"The officers of the foreign Squadron, no doubt," said the Ambassador, "being shown the sights of the capital. Day after to-morrow the Minister of Marine begins the official entertainment with a ball in their honor. You will enjoy that, Barbara."

"I wish," said the bishop, "that the pessimists who are so fond of talking of diplomatic 'strain' could see a Japanese welcome. The stay of these officers will be one long festivity. Yet to read a Continental journal you would think every other Japanese was carrying a club for use if they ventured ashore."

The Ambassador watched the cavalcade thoughtfully. For weeks, the newspapers of European capitals had talked of conflicting interests and unreconciled differences between the two countries. He knew that there was little in this, in fact, save the journalistic necessity for "news" and a nervousness that seems periodically to oppress highly strung Chanceries as it does individuals. Beneath this surface current, diplomacy had gone its even, temperate way, undisturbed. But as a trained diplomatist he knew that the most baseless rumor, if too long persisted in, had grave danger, and he had welcomed the coming of the Squadron, for the sake of the effect on foreign public opinion, of the lavish and open-hearted hospitality which Japan would offer it. When the carriages had whirled past he bade the others good-by and went back to his books.

Walking up the sloping "Hill-of-the-Spirit" to the templed knoll behind it, Barbara felt in tune with the afternoon. All along flaunting camphor-trees and cryptomeria peered above the skirting walls and the scent of wistaria was as heavy as that of new-mown hay. The ground was white and dusty and here and there briskly moving handcarts were sprinkling water. Little girls, with their hair in pigtails tied with bright-colored yarn and ribbon, and in brilliant figured kimono of red and purple, ran hither and thither in some game, and on the gutter-edge a naked baby stared up at them with grave, mistrustful eyes, his shaven head bobbing in the sunshine. Half-way up the hill a group of coolies were resting beside their carts. Their faces had the look of lotos-eaters, languid and serene. As they walked Barbara told of the adventure of the evening before with the wolf-hound, and of the Review of the morning, and the bishop, shrewdly regarding her, thought he had never seen her so beautiful.

"What has happened—who has happened, Barbara?" he asked, for he suddenly guessed he knew what that look meant.

Her eyes dropped and her rising color confirmed his idea. "I don't know—do you?"

He took out his pocketbook and handed her a clipping from a morning newspaper. It chronicled the arrival of the yacht Barbara.

She looked at him out of eyes brimming with laughter:

"But not Ware?" he finished. "All right. He'll speak for himself, no doubt. The paper says he's at Nara; but then, he doesn't know you are here yet. We pushed our sailing date forward, you remember."

"I'm trying to curb my impatience," she said blithely. "Meanwhile, I can't tell you what a good time I'm having. I shall stay in Japan for ever: I can feel it in my bones! I shall have a Japanese house with a chaperon, two tailless cats and an amah, and study the three systems of flower-arrangement and the Tea-Ceremony."

They had reached the huge gate, with its little booth in which a sentry now stood. "He wears the uniform of the Imperial Guard," the bishop said. "That is the residence of one of the daughters of the Emperor."

He turned into the lane that opened opposite. It was hedged with some unfamiliar thorny shrub with woolly yellow blossoms, and a little way inside stood an old temple gate with a stone torii. She stopped with an exclamation.

"Yes," he said, "there is the Chapel."

Barbara was looking opposite the torii, where, amid the flowering green, a slanting roof lifted, holding a cross. It stood out, whitely cut against the blue, a silent witness. Facing the dragon-swarming gate, it made her think of pale martyrs in gorgeous pagan countries, of Paul standing before the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, and lonely Christian anchorites in profane lands of green and gold.

"What Christians some of these Japanese make!" the bishop said, as they finished their tour of the building. "I know of a carpenter in Sendai who became a convert. He used to visit the prison and one day he took a woman there to see her husband, a hardened and obdurate criminal. In the interview the man stabbed his wife. The chief-of-police, on account of the carpenter's reputation for justice and pure-living, left the punishment of the man to him. What do you think he did?"

She could not guess.

"He refused to punish him at all, on the simple ground that Christ would not. As a result the convict is now one of the best Christian teachers we have in Sendai. The month before this happened," he continued, smiling reflectively, "a thief broke into the rectory and stole my watch. I notified the police, and they brought it back to me in a few days. But where is my thief? You remember Jean Valjean and the silver candle-sticks? Maybe the Sendai carpenter was nearer right than I."

Barbara had paused in front of the black space for the stained-glass window.

"It will be here," the bishop said, answering her thought. "It is to be put in place in time for the dedication service to-morrow morning." He stepped to the door and peered into the interior. "You will want to look about a bit, no doubt. I have a call to make in the neighborhood—suppose I stop on my way back for you."

For a few moments after his departure Barbara stood listening to the dulled sound of the workmen's tools. The roof of the temple opposite had a curving, Tartar-like ridge, at either end of which was a huge fish, its head pointed inward, its wide forked tail twisted high in air. Under its scalloped eaves she saw the flash of a swallow, and far above a gaudy paper kite careened in the blue.

She crossed the lane and looked into the shady inclosure, where the bronze lanterns and the tombstones stood, as gray and lichened as the stone beneath her feet. Before many of the graves stood green bamboo vases holding bunches of fresh leaves. An old woman was moving noiselessly about, watering these with a long bamboo dipper and lighting incense-sticks as she went. In one place a young man knelt before an ancestral monument, softly clapping his hands in prayer. The whole place was drenched in a tone limpid and serene, the very infusion of peace. Only in the black temple interior she caught the dim glow of candles and somewhere a muffled baton was tapping on hollow wood.

"Min ... Min ... Min .. Min .. Min . Min . Min-Min-Min-Minminminminmin...." At first slowly, then faster and faster, till the notes merged and died away in a muttering roll, to begin once more with the slowness of a leisurely metronome.

The ornate front of the building on the right of the yard attracted her and she went nearer. Beyond the hedge she could see a portion of its garden. Reflecting that this was a temple property and hence, no doubt, open to the public, she unlatched its bamboo gate and entered.

Before her curved a line of flat stepping-stones set in clean, gray gravel. On one side was a low camelia hedge spotted with blossoms of deep crimson and on the other a miniature thicket of fern and striped ground-bamboo. Beyond this rose a mossy hillock up whose green sides clambered an irregular pathway, set with tall shinto lanterns and large stones, like gigantic, many-colored quartz pebbles. Here and there the flushed pink of cherry-trees made the sky a tapestry of blue-rose, and in the hollows grew a burnished, purple shrub that seemed to be powdering the ground with the velvet petals of pansies.

Barbara had seen many photographs of Japanese gardens, but they had either lacked color or been over-tinted. This lay chromatic, visualized, braided with precious hues and steeped in the tender, unshamed glories of a tropic spring. For a moment she shut her eyes to fix the picture for ever on her brain.

She opened them again to a flood of sunlight on the gilded carvings of the ancient structure. Its shoji had been noiselessly drawn open, and a man stood there looking fixedly at her.