"Once there was a young girl," Mrs. Davis began, "who was born in a beautiful city away across the seas. She was just as beautiful and good—as—as you are, NumÈ. But, although the city was very beautiful in which she lived, she had very little in her life to make her happy. She lived all alone in a house so big that the halls and stairways were as long as—as the pagodas. She seldom saw her father because he was always away traveling, and, besides, he did not love children much. Her mother was always sick, and when the little girl came near her she would fret and worry, and say that the little girl made her nervous. So she grew up very, very hungry for some one to love her. After a time, when she became a beautiful young lady, many men thought they loved her; but she had grown so used to not loving, and to not being loved by any one, that she never could care for any of them. At last there came one man who seemed different to her from all the others. And, NumÈ, he fell in love with her—and she loved him. Oh! you don't know how much they loved each other. They were with each other constantly, and, and,—are you tired?" she interrupted herself to ask the girl, who had moved restlessly.

"No."

"Well, NumÈ, then her lover, that she loved so much you would have cried to have seen her, went far, far away from her to take a fine position, and he promised her faithfully that he would love only her, and would send for her soon. So the girl waited. But he did not send for her soon, NumÈ. He kept putting off and putting off—till three long years had passed; and all this time she had been true to him—waiting for him only to say the word to come. Then, at last, he wrote to her, asking her to come to him all the way across the seas—thousands and thousands of miles, and she left her beautiful home, and came with her sick mother to join him."

NumÈ's eyes were fastened on her face with a look of intense interest.

"Ess?" she said, as the American lady paused.

"When she reached him she found he had changed—though she had not. He was cold, and always bored; kind to her at times, and indifferent at others. Still, she loved him so much she forgave him, and was so sweet and gentle to him that even he began to melt and began to be kinder to her, and all, NumÈ, would have turned out happily, and he would have loved her as he used to, only—only——" she paused in her story. She had exaggerated and drawn on her imagination strongly in order to make an impression on NumÈ; for she knew the girl's weakness lay in her tender heart.

"Only whad, Mrs. Davees?"

"NumÈ—the girl was Miss Ballard—the man Mr. Sinclair. Oh, NumÈ, you don't want to separate them now after all these years. Think how cruel it would be. It would kill her, and——"

NumÈ had risen to her feet. She looked out at the burning blaze of the oriental landscape, the endless blue of the fields—at the misty mountains in the distance. She was trying to reason. The first real trouble of her life had come to her. She thought of all to whom she would bring sorrow should she yield to Sinclair; of the two old fathers, for she knew nothing as yet of what Orito had told them. She thought of the beautiful American girl, and remembered the look on her face that night of the ball. She wondered how she would have felt in her place. Her voice was quite subdued and hushed as she turned to Mrs. Davis.

"NumÈ will marry only Orito," she said. "NumÈ will tell Mr. Sinka so."

The other woman put her arms around the girl and attempted to draw her to her with the old affection; but NumÈ shrank strangely from her, and perhaps half the pleasure at her success was lost as Mrs. Davis saw the look of mute suffering in the girl's face.