silent—only one voice had said: "That's 'Duke' Daunt." Then the melody suddenly broke queerly and stopped, and the man who had spoken got up quickly and said: "I'm going in. It's time to dress anyway." And somehow his voice had seemed to break queerly, too.

Duke Daunt! The scene shifted into the next day, when she had met him for a handful of delirious moments. For how long afterward had he remained her childish idol! Time had overlaid the memory, but it started bright now at the sound of that whistled tune.

Her uncle's voice recalled her. He was handing her his binoculars. She took them, chose a spot well forward and glued her eyes to the glass.

A sigh of ecstasy came from her lips, for it brought the land almost at arm's length—the stone hatoba crowded with brown Japanese faces, pricked out here and there by the white Panama hat or pith-helmet of the foreigner; at one side a bouquet of gay muslin dresses and beribboned parasols flanked by a phalanx of waiting rick'sha,—the little flotilla of crimson sails at the yacht anchorage—the stately, columned front of the club on the Bund with its cool terrace of round tables—the kimono'd figures squatting under the grotesquely bent pines along the water-front, where a motor-car flashed like a brilliant mailed beetle—farther away tiny shop-fronts hung with waving figured blue and beyond them a gray billowing of tiled roofs, and long, bright, yellow-chequered streets sauntering toward a mass of glowing green from which cherry blooms soared like pink balloons. Arching over all the enormous height of the spring-time blue, and the dreamy soft witchery of the declining sun. It unfolded before her like a panorama—all the basking, many-hued, polyglot, half-tropical life—a colorful medley, queer and mysterious!

Nearer, nearer yet, the ship drew on, till there came to meet it two curved arms of breakwater, a miniature lighthouse at each side. The captain on the bridge lifted his hand, and a cheer rose from the group of male passengers below him as the anchor-chain snored through the hawse-holes.

Barbara lowered the glass from her eyes. The slow swinging of the vessel to the anchor had brought a dazzling bulk between her gaze and the shore, perilously near. She saw it now in its proper perspective—a trim steam yacht, painted white, with a rakish air of speed and tautness, the sun glinting from its polished brass fittings. It lay there, graceful and light, a sharp, clean contrast to the gray and yellow junk and grotesque sampan, a disdainful swan amid a noisy flock of teal and mallard.

Adjusting the focus Barbara looked. A man in naval uniform who had boarded the ship at Quarantine was pointing out the yacht to a passenger, and Barbara caught crisp bits of sentences: "You see the patches of green?—they're decorations for the Squadron that's due to-morrow. Look just beyond them. Prettiest craft I've ever seen east of the Straits.... Came in this morning. Owner's in Nara now, doing the temples.... Has a younger brother who's been out here for a year, going the pace.... They won't let private yachts lie any closer in or they'd go high and dry on empty champagne bottles."

Barbara was feeling a strange sensation of familiarity. Puzzled, she withdrew her gaze, then looked once more.

Suddenly she dropped the glass with a startled exclamation. "What are you going to do with that man?"—her uncle's query seemed to echo satirically about her. For the white yacht was Austen Ware's, and there, on the gleaming bows, in polished golden letters, was the name

BARBARA

CHAPTER II
"THE ROOST"

The day had been sluggish with the promise of summer, but the failing afternoon had brought a soft suspiration from the broad bosom of the Pacific laden with a refreshing coolness. Along the Bund, however, there was little stir. A few blocks away the foreign dive-quarter was drowsing, and only a single samisen twanged in Hep Goon's saloon, where sailors of a dozen nationalities spent their wages while in port. At the curbing, under the telegraph poles, the chattering rick'sha coolies squatted, playing Go with flat stones on a square scratched with a pointed stick in the hard, beaten ground. On the spotless mats behind their paper shoji the curio-merchants sat on their gaudy wadded cushions, while, over the glowing fire-bowls of charcoal in the inner rooms, their wives cooked the rice for the early evening meal. The office of the Grand Hotel was quiet; only a handful of loungers gossiped at the bar, and the last young lady tourist had finished her flirtation on the terrace and retired to the comfort of a stayless kimono. In the deep foliage of the "Bluff" the slanting sunlight caught and quivered till the green mole seemed a mighty beryl, and in its hedge-shaded lanes, dreamy as those of an English village, the clear air was pungent with tropic blooms.

On one of these fragrant byways, its front looking out across the bay, stood a small bungalow which bore over its gateway the dubious appellation "The Roost." From its enclosed piazza, over which a wistaria vine hung pale pendants, a twisted stair led to the roof, half of which was flat. This space was surrounded by a balustrade and shaded by a rounded gaily striped awning. From this airy retreat the water, far below, looked like a violet shawl edged with shimmering quicksilver and embroidered with fairy fishing junk and sampan; and the subdued voices of the street mingled, vague and undefined, with a rich dank smell of foliage, that moved silently, heavy with the odor of plum-blossoms, a gliding ghost of perfume. Thin blue-and-white Tientsin rugs and green wicker settees gave an impression of coolness and comfort; a pair of ornate temple brasses gleamed on a smoking-stand, and a rich Satsuma bowl did duty for a tobacco jar.

Under the striped awning three men were grouped about a miniature roulette table; a fourth, middle-aged and of huge bulk, with a cynical, Semitic face, from a wide arm-chair was lazily peering through the fleecy curdle of a Turkish cigarette. A fifth stood leaning against the balustrade, watching.

The last was tall, clean-cut and smooth-shaven, with comely head well set on broad shoulders, and gray eyes keen and alert. Possibly no one of the foreign colony (where a Secretary of Embassy was by no means a rara avis) was better liked than Duke Daunt, even by those who never attempted to be sufficiently familiar with him to call him by the nickname, which a characteristic manner had earned him in his salad days.

At intervals a player muttered an impatient exclamation or gave a monosyllabic order to the stolid Japanese servant who passed noiselessly, deftly replenishing glasses. Through all ran the droning buzz of bees in the wistaria, the recurrent rustle of the metal wheel, the nervous click of the rolling marble and the shuffle and thud of the ivory disks on the green baize. All at once the marble blundered into its compartment and one of the gamesters burst into a boisterous laugh of triumph.

As the sudden discord jangled across the silence, the big man in the arm-chair started half round, his lips twitched and a spasm of something like fright crossed his face. The glass at his elbow was empty, but he raised it and drained air, while the ice in it tinkled and clinked. He set it down and wiped his lips with a