The last rays of sunset were tingeing the land, lingering in splendor above the bay. The waters had caught the golden glow, and, miser-like, seemingly made effort to keep it with them; but, inexorably, the lowering sun drew away its gilding light, leaving the waters a dark green. The shadows began to darken, faint stars peeped out of the heavens, and slowly, unwillingly, the day’s last ray followed the sunken sun to rest; and with its vanishment a pale moon stole overhead and threw a seraphic light over all things.

Out in the bay that the sun had left was a tiny island, and on this a Japanese business man, who must also have been an artist, had built a tea-house and laid out a garden. Such an island! In the sorcerous moonlight, one might easily believe it the witch-work of an Oriental Merlin. Running in every direction were narrow jinrikisha roads, which crossed bewildering little creeks, spanned by entrancing bridges. These were round and high, and curved in the centre, and clinging vines and creeping, nameless flowers crawled up the sides and twined about the tiny steps which ascended to the bridges. After crossing a bridge shaped thus, a straight bridge is forever an outrage to the eye and sense. And all along the beach of this island was pure white sand, which looked weirdly whiter where the moonbeams loitered and played hide-and-seek under the tree-shadows.

The seekers of pleasure who made their way out to the little island on this night moored their boats here in the shadows beneath the trees, and drove in fairy vehicles, pulled by picturesque runners, clear around the island, under the pine-trees, over miniature brooks, into the mysterious dark of a forest. Suddenly they were in a blaze of swinging, dazzling lights, laughter and music, chatter, the clattering of dishes, the twang of the samisen, the ron-ton-ton of the biwa. They had reached the garden and the tea-house.

Some pleasure-loving Japanese were giving a banquet in honor of the full moon, and the moon, just over their heads, clothed in glorious raiment, and sitting on a sky-throne of luminous silver, was attending the banquet in person, surrounded by myriad twinkling stars, who played at being her courtiers. Each of the guests had his own little mat, table, and waitress. They sat in a semicircle, and drank the sake hot, in tiny cups that went thirty or more to the pint; or the Kyoto beer that had been ordered for the foreigners who were the chief guests this evening. This is the toast the Japanese made to the moon: “May she with us drink a cup of immortality!” and then each wished the one nearest him ten thousand years of joy.

Now the moon-path widened on the bay, and the moon itself expanded and grew more luminous as though in proud sympathy and understanding of the thousand banquets held in her honor this night. All the music and noise and clatter and revel had gradually ceased, and for a time an eloquent silence was everywhere. Huge glowing fire-flies, flitting back and forth like tiny twinkling stars, seemed to be the only things stirring.

Some one snuffed the candles in the lanterns, and threw a large mat in the centre of the garden, and dusted it extravagantly with rice flour. Then a shaft of light, that might have been the combination of a thousand moonbeams, was flashed on the mat from an opening in the upper part of the house, and out of the shadows sprang on to the mat a wild, vivid little figure, clad in scintillating robes that reflected every ray of light thrown on them; and, with her coming, the air was filled with the weird, wholly fascinating music of the koto and samisen.

She pirouetted around on the tips of the toes of one little foot, clapped her hands, and courtesied to the four corners of the earth. Her dance was one of the body rather than of the feet, as back and forth she swerved. There was a patter, patter, patter. Her garments seemed endowed with life, and took on a sorrowing appearance; the lights changed to accompany her; the music sobbed and quivered. It had begun to rain! She was raining! It seemed almost as if the pitter-patter of her feet were the falling of tiny raindrops; the sadness of her garments had increased, and now they seemed to be weeping, at first gradually, then faster and still faster, until finally she was a storm—a dark, blowing, lightning storm. From above the light shot down in quick, sharp flashes, the drums clashed madly, the koto wept on, and the samisen shrieked vindictively.

Suddenly the storm quieted down and ceased. A blue light flung itself against the now lightly swaying figure; then the seven colors of the spectrum flashed on her at once. She spread her garments wide; they fluttered about her in a large half-circle, and, underneath the rainbow of the gown, a girl’s face, of exquisite beauty, smiled and drooped. Then the extinction of light—and she was gone.

A common cry of admiration and wonder broke out from Japanese and foreigners alike. They called for her, clapped, stamped, whistled, cheered. One man’s voice rose above the clatter of noises that had broken loose all over the gardens. He was demanding excitedly of the proprietor to tell him who she was.

The proprietor, smirking and bowing and cringing, nevertheless would not tell.

The American theatrical manager lost his head a moment. He could make that girl’s fortune in America! He understood it was possible to purchase a geisha for a certain term of years. He stood ready on the spot to do this. He was ready to offer a good price for her. Who was she, and where did she live?

Meanwhile the nerve-scraping dzin, dzin, dzin of a samisen was disturbing the air with teasing persistence. There is something provoking and still alluring in the music of the samisen. It startles the chills in the blood like the maddening scraping of a piece of metal against stone, and still there is an indescribable fascination and beauty about it. Now as it scratched and squealed intermittently and gradually twittered down to a zoom, zoom, zoom, a voice rose softly, and gently, insinuatingly, it entered into the music of the samisen. Only one long note had broken loose, which neither trembled nor wavered. When it had ended none could say, only that it had passed into other notes as strangely beautiful, and a girl was singing.

Again the light flashed down and showed her standing on the same mat on which she had danced, her hands clasped, her face raised. She was ethereal, divinely so. Her kimono was all white, save where the shaft of moonbeams touched the silk to silvery brilliance. And her voice! All the notes were minors, piercing, sweet, melancholy—terribly beautiful. She was singing music unheard in any land save the Orient, and now for the first time, perhaps, appreciated by the foreigners, because of that voice—a voice meant for just such a medley of melody. And when she had ceased, the last note had not died out, did not fall, but remained raised, unfinished, giving to the Occidental ears a sense of incompleteness. Her audience leaned forward, peering into the darkness, waiting for the end.

The American theatrical manager stalked towards the light, which lingered a moment, and died out, as if by magic, as he reached it. But the girl was gone.

“By Jove! She’s great!” he cried out, enthusiastically. Then he turned on the proprietor. “Where is she? Where can I find her?”

The man shook his head.

“Oh, come, now,” the American demanded, impatiently, “I’ll pay you.”

“I don’ know. She is gone.”

“But you know where she lives?”

The proprietor again answered in the negative.

“Now, wouldn’t that make one of this country’s squatty little gods groan?” the exasperated manager demanded of a younger man who had followed him forward.

“She’d be a great card in vaudeville,” the young man contented himself with saying.

“There’s a fortune in her! I’m going to find her if she’s on this island. Come on with me, will you?”

Nothing loath, Jack Bigelow fared forth behind the theatrical man, whom he had never seen before that afternoon, and whom he never expected to see again. They hurried down one of the narrow, shadowy roads that almost made a labyrinth of the island. But fortune was with them. A turn in the road, which showed the waters of the bay not fifty yards ahead, revealed just in front of them two figures—two women—both small, but one a trifle taller than her companion.

“Hi there! You!” shouted the manager, who, though among a people whose civilization was older than his own, considered them but heathen, and gave them the scant courtesy deserved by all so benighted in matters theatrical. The two figures suddenly stopped.

“Are you the girl who sang?”

“Yes,” came the answer in a clear voice from the taller figure.

The manager was not slow in coming to the point.

“Would you like to be rich?”

Again the positive monosyllable, uttered with much eagerness.

“Good!” The manager’s face could not be seen, but his satisfaction was revealed in his voice. “Just come with me to America, and your fortune’s made!”

She stood silent, her head down, so that the manager prompted her impatiently: “Well?”

“I stay ad Japan,” she said.

“Stay at Japan!” The manager barely controlled himself. “Why, you can never get rich in this land. Now look-a-here—I’ll call and see you to-morrow. Where do you live?”

“I don’ want you call. I stay ad Japan.”

This time the manager, seeing a possible fortune escaping him, and having in mind the courtesy due the heathen, delivered himself of a large Christian oath. “If you stay here, you’re a fool. You’ll never—”

The young man named Bigelow, who had watched the attempted bargaining in silence, broke in with some indignation. “Oh, let her go! She’s got a right to do as she pleases, you know. Don’t try to bully her into going to America if she’d rather stay here.”

“Well, I suppose I can’t use force to make her take a good thing,” said the manager, ungraciously. He drew out his card-case and handed the girl his card. “Perhaps you’ll change your mind after you think about this a bit. If you do, my name and Tokyo address are on that card; just come round and see me. I’m going down to Bombay to look out for some Indian jugglers. I’ll be gone about five months, and will be back in Tokyo before I start out on another trip to China, Corea, and the Philippines, and then off for home.”

The girl took the card and listened in silence; when he finished, she courtesied, slipped a hand into that of her companion, and hurried down the narrow road.

After the two Americans had made their way back to the tea-garden, the older one at once sought out the proprietor.

“You know something about that girl. Come, tell us,” he said, imperiously.

The proprietor was profusely courteous, but hesitated to speak of the one who had danced and sung. Finally he unbent grudgingly. He told the theatrical man and his companion that he knew next to nothing about her. She had come to him a stranger, and had offered her services. She refused to enter into the usual contract demanded of most geishas, and in view of her talents he could not afford to lose her. She was attracting large crowds to his gardens by her strange dances. Still he disliked and mistrusted her. She came only when it suited her whim, and on fÊtes and occasions of this kind he had no means of knowing where she was. It was only by accident she had happened in this evening. Once he had attempted to follow her, but she had discovered him, and made him promise never to do such a thing again, threatening to stay away altogether if he did so. He spoke disparagingly of her:

“Beautiful, excellencies! Phow! You cannot see properly in the deceitful light of this honorable moon. A cheap girl of Tokyo, with the blue-glass eyes of the barbarian, the yellow skin of the lower Japanese, the hair of mixed color, black and red, the form of a Japanese courtesan, and the heart and nature of those honorably unreliable creatures, alien at this country, alien at your honorable country, augustly despicable—a half-caste!”