In Numè's great sorrow and illness she would have no one by her save Koto, and once in a while Koto's friend, Matsu, who was visiting them. Koto had had her come to the house because she played the harp so beautifully, and she knew the music would please Numè. Both the girls tried in every way to make up to the grieving orphan for the sorrows that had suddenly come to darken her young life. Often the three would sit together hand in hand, Numè between her two friends, speaking no word to each other, but each feeling strangely comforted and refreshed with the others' love and sympathy. After the funeral ceremony, Numè had awakened somewhat out of her apathy, and tried to take interest in things about her; but it was a pitiful effort, and always made Koto weep so much that one day Matsu had suggested to her that she go to the city and see the American and tell him the truth. For Numè had told Koto of what Mrs. Davis had caused her to do; and Koto, in her turn, had told Matsu.

"You have become too secluded and proud, Koto," the city geisha girl told her. "It is an easy matter to go to the city and perhaps you will do Numè and the American a great service. I will stay with Numè-san while you are gone, and will wait on her just as if I were indeed her maid instead of your being so." It was in this way Koto had been induced to visit the American.

Still Numè did not reply. Her little head had fallen back weakly against the pillow. She was looking away out before her. After a time Koto put her arms about her, and they clung together.

"Koto," Numè said, vaguely, "will you leave me now? Or will you stay with me forever? Numè is so lonely now."

Koto evaded the question.

"I will stay with you, Numè-san, until you do not need me any longer."

"That will never be," the other said, tenderly.

That afternoon Koto fetched her samisen and played very softly to Numè. After a time she laid her instrument aside and went to the door, shading her face with her hand as she scanned the road. It was about the hour Sinclair had told her to expect him. She heard the beat of his runners before they were within a mile of the house.

"I am going to leave you all alone, for a little while," she told Numè.

She went down to meet Sinclair, and admitted him into the house. She pointed to the room where Numè was and then left him.

Sinclair pushed aside the shoji and passed into the room.

Numè raised her head languidly at the opening of the screens. At first she thought she was dreaming, and she sat up straight on the little couch on which she had been resting. Suddenly Sinclair was beside her, and had taken her bodily into his arms.

"Numè! Numè!" he whispered;—and then, as she struggled faintly to be free, he said, blissfully, "Oh, I know the truth, little sweetheart, though it is too good for me to understand it yet. Koto has told me everything, and—and oh! Numè!" He kissed the wistful eyes rapturously.

He scarcely knew her, she had grown so quiet and sad. In the woods she had chattered constantly to him;—now, he could not make her say anything. But after a while, when Sinclair had chided her for her silence, she said, very shyly:

"Do you luf me, Mr. Sinka, bedder than the beautiful Americazan lady?"

Sinclair raised her little face between his two hands.

"Sweetheart—do you need to ask?" he said. "I have never loved any one but you."

The girl smiled—the first time she had smiled in weeks. Her two little hands met round his neck, she rose on tiptoe. "Numè lig' to kees with you," she said, artlessly. There is no need to tell what Sinclair answered.

When the shadows began to deepen, he and Numè still sat together on the small lounge, neither of them conscious of time or place. They were renewing their acquaintance with each other, and each was discovering new delights in the other.

It was Koto who broke in on them. She had been in the next room all the time, and had watched them through small peep-holes in the wall.

She made a great noise at the other side of it to let them know it was now getting late. They looked at each other smiling, both comprehending.

"Koto is our friend foraever," Numè said.

"We will be Koto's friends forever," Sinclair answered.

CHAPTER LVI. THE PENALTY.

When Sinclair returned to the city that night he sat down in his office and wrote a letter to Cleo Ballard. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life. It told her briefly of his love for Numè. He felt he could not be a good husband to her so long as he loved another woman. It was better she knew it than to find it out after they had married.

Mrs. Davis gave it to Cleo when she thought her strong enough to bear the shock. She read it with white lips, her poor, thin hands trembling as the letter slipped to her feet.

"I expected it," she said, bitterly, to Mrs. Davis; and then suddenly, without the smallest warning, she leaned over and picked the scattered sheets from the floor and tore them into a thousand fragments with such fierceness that it frightened her friend.

After that day Mrs. Davis devoted herself more than ever to her friend, and scarce left her alone for a moment. A strange calm and quiet had come over Cleo. She would sit for hours by an open window, perfectly silent, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking out before her with large eyes which were dry of tears, but which held a nameless brooding.

Mrs. Davis tried in every way to cheer her up, but though she protested that she was not suffering, yet she could not deceive her friend who knew her so well.

"You are going to be happy, dear, and as soon as you are strong enough we'll make the voyage back. You didn't know I was going with you, did you? Well, dear," her sweet voice faltered, "I couldn't bear to stay here—after—after you were gone. We will all be happy when in America again. I believe that's what has made us all more or less gloomy. We have been homesick. Japan is all right, beautiful and all that—but, well, it is not America. We never could feel the same here." So she rattled on to Cleo, trying to take the girl's thoughts out of herself.

And then, one day, Cleo turned to her and told her very quietly that she knew everything.

Mrs. Davis gasped. "Everything!"

She looked at the girl's calm, emotionless face in horror. "And—and you——"

"I've known it some time now," the girl continued, grimly. She heard the other woman sobbing for her, and put her hand out and found the little sympathetic one extended.

"I know—know, dear, how you tried to hide it from me," she smiled faintly; "that could not be."

Mrs. Davis was mute. Cleo was an enigma to her now.

"I never guessed you knew."

"No? Mother told me. She did not mean to be cruel, but she was not well herself then, and she—she reproached me."

She rose suddenly to her feet, the same still, white look on her face that had come there when she had read Sinclair's letter. She turned on her friend with an almost fierce movement.

"Why don't you hate me?" she said, with only half-repressed vehemence. "Why does not every one—as I do myself?"

She was beyond the comfort of her friend now. Jenny Davis could only watch her with wide eyes of wonder and agony. For a moment the girl paced the room with restless, dragging step, like a wild caged thing.

"Jenny, I will tell you something now. You may laugh at me—laugh as—I can—as I do myself, but——" Again she paused, and she put her hand to her throat as though the words choked her.

"After I read that—that letter, it seemed as if something broke in me—not my heart—no, don't think that; but at first I felt desolate, with a loneliness you could never comprehend. He had been in my mind so many years then. Yes, I know—I had expected it all—but it was a shock at first. I never could face anything painful all my life, and when I actually knew the truth—when I read his letter, and it was cruel, after all, Jenny, I wanted to go away somewhere and hide myself—no—I wanted to go to some one—some one who really loved me, and cry my heart out. Don't you understand me, Jenny? Oh, you must——" her voice was dragging painfully now. "I wanted—to—go—to Orito!"

"Cleo!"

"Yes, it is true," she went on, wildly. "He was better than the other. So much tenderer and truer—the best man I ever knew—the only person in the whole world who ever really loved me. And I—Jenny, I killed him! Think of it, and pity me—no, don't pity me—I deserve none. And then—and then——" she was beginning to lose command of her speech now. Mrs. Davis tried to draw her into a chair, but she put the clinging, loving hands from her and continued: "When I wanted him—when that other had deserted me—had let me know the truth that he never did care for me—never did care for me," she repeated, incoherently, "and I loved him all those years. I used to lie awake at night and cry for him,—for Orito—for his comfort—just as I do now. I cannot help myself. I thought I would go to him and tell him everything—he would understand—how—how my heart had awakened—how I must have loved him all along. And then—then mother burst out at me only last week, Jenny, and told me the truth—that—that he was dead—that he had killed himself; no—that I had killed him. Do you wonder I did not die—go mad when I learned the truth? Oh, Jenny, I am half dead—I am so numb, dead to all pleasure, all hope in life."

She had been speaking spasmodically; at first with a hard, metallic ring to her voice, and then wildly and passionately. Now her voice suddenly trembled and melted. She was still quite weak, and had excited herself. Her friend caught her to her breast just in time for the flood of tears to come—tears that were a necessary, blessed relief. She broke down utterly and began to sob in a pitiful, hopeless, heart-breaking fashion.

From that day, however, she seemed to improve, though she was erratic and moody. She would insist on seeing all the callers—those who came because of their genuine liking for her, and sorrow in her illness, and the larger number who came out of curiosity. However much of her heart she had shown to Mrs. Davis, no one else of all Cleo's friends guessed the turmoil that battled in her breast.

CHAPTER LVII. THE PITY OF IT ALL.

Although it was nearly two weeks since Sinclair had written to her, she had not seen him once. He had talked the matter over with Tom and Mrs. Davis, and they had decided that, for a time at least, it would be best for her not to see him. About a week before the Ballards sailed, Cleo wrote to Sinclair. She made no allusion whatever to his letter to her. She simply asked him to come and see her before she left Japan, and without a moment's hesitation Sinclair went straight to her. He could afford to be generous now that his own happiness was assured.

It was a strange meeting. The man was at first constrained and ill at ease. On the other hand, the girl met him in a perfectly emotionless, calm fashion. She gave him her hand steadily, and her voice did not falter in the slightest.

"I want you to know the truth," she said, "before I go away."

"Don't let us talk about it, Cleo," Sinclair said. "It will only cause you pain."

"That is what I deserve," she said. "That is why I have always been wrong—I was afraid to look anything painful in the face. I avoided and shrank from it till—till it broke my heart. It does me good now to talk—to speak of it all."

He sat down beside Cleo, and looked at her with eyes of compassion.

"You must not pity me," she said, a trifle unsteadily. "I do not deserve it. I have been a very wicked woman."

"It was not altogether your fault, Cleo," he said, vaguely trying to comfort, but she contradicted him almost fiercely.

"It was—it was, indeed, all my fault." She caught her breath sharply. "However, that was not what I wanted to speak about. It was this. I wanted to tell you that—that—after all, I do not love you. That I—I loved him—Orito!" She half-breathed the last word.

Sinclair sat back in his chair, and looked at her with slow, studying eyes.

She repeated wearily: "Yes; I loved him—but I—did not—know—it till it was too late!"

For a long time after that the two sat in complete silence. Sinclair could not find words to speak to her, and the girl had exhausted her heart in that heart-breaking and now tragic confession.

Then the man broke the silence with a sharp, almost impatient, ejaculation, which escaped him unconsciously. "The pity of it all!—Good God!"

"Arthur, I want to see—to speak to Numè before I go away. You will let me; will you not?"

He hesitated only a moment, and then: "Yes, dear, anything you want."

And when he was leaving her, she said to him, abruptly, with a sharp questioning note in her voice that wanted to be denied:

"I am a very wicked woman!"

"No—no; anything but that," he said, and stooping kissed her thin, frail hand.

Something choked him at the heart and blinded his eyes as he left her, and all the way back to his office, in the jinrikisha, he kept thinking of the girl's white, suffering face, and memories of the gay, happy, careless Cleo he had known in America mingled with it in his thoughts in a frightful medley. Something like remorse crept into his own heart; for was he entirely blameless? But he forgot everything painful when he arrived home, for there was a perfume-scented little note written on thin rice-paper, waiting for him, and Numè was expecting him that day. When one has present happiness, it is not hard to forget the sorrows of others.

CHAPTER LVIII. MRS. DAVIS'S NERVES.

The next day Sinclair brought Cleo to call on Numè. It was the first time the two girls had ever really talked with each other. At first Numè declared she would not see the American girl, whom she held responsible for her father's, Sachi's and Orito's deaths, but after Sinclair had talked to her for a while and had told her how the other girl was suffering, and how she, after all, really loved Orito, the girl's tender little heart was touched, and she was as anxious to see Cleo as Cleo was to see her.

She went herself down the little garden path to meet Cleo, and held her two little hands out with a great show of cordiality and almost affection.

"Tha's so perlite thad you cummin' to see me," she said.

Cleo smiled, the first time in days, perhaps. It pleased Numè. "Ah!" she said, "how nize thad is—jus' lig' sunbeam in dark room!"

She was very anxious to please the American girl and make her feel at her ease, and she chatted on happily to her. She wanted Cleo to understand that in spite of her father's death she was not altogether unhappy, for she had talked the matter over very solemnly with Koto and Matsu only the previous night, and they had all agreed that Cleo's desire to see her (Numè) was prompted by remorse, which remorse Numè wished to lessen, to please Sinclair.

Sinclair left them alone together, and strolled over to Mrs. Davis's house. She had been kept in ignorance of this proposed visit. Sinclair found her busily engaged in packing, preparatory to leaving. Mrs. Davis was in despair over some American furniture that she did not want to take with her.

"Can't you leave it behind?"

"No; the new landlord won't let me. Says the Japanese have no use for American furniture—unpleasant in the houses during earthquakes, etc."

"Well, I'll take care of them for you," Sinclair volunteered, good-naturedly.

"Oh, will you? Now, that will be good of you. That settles that, then. And now about this stuff—come on, Tom," she began crushing things into boxes and trunks, in her quick, delightful fashion, scarce noting where she was placing them. She paused a moment to ask Sinclair if he had been over to Numè's.

"Yes," he smiled a trifle. "Cleo is there now."

She dropped a piece of bric-a-brac and sat down on the floor.

"Cleo! there—with Numè! Well!"

"Yes, she wanted to know Numè, she said, before going away," Sinclair told her.

"She will never cease surprising me," Mrs. Davis said, plaintively. "She ought not to excite herself. I never know what to expect of her, which way to take her. I used to think my nerves were strong; now—my nerves are—are nervous."

"Cleo is not herself lately," Tom said, quietly, without looking up. "We'd better humor her for a little while still. Besides—Numè will do her good, I believe."

CHAPTER LIX. CLEO AND NUMÈ.

As soon as Sinclair left them the Japanese girl went close up to the American girl.

"Sa-ay—I goin' tell you something," she said, confidingly.

"Yes, dear."

"You mos' beautifoolest womans barbarian—No! no! nod thad. Egscuse me. I nod perlite to mag' mistakes sometimes. I mean I thing' you mos' beautifoolest ladies I aever seen," she said.

Again Cleo smiled. Numè wished she would say something.

"You lig' me?" she prompted, encouragingly.

"Yes——"

"Foraever an' aever?"

"Well—yes—I guess so."

"How nize!" she clapped her hands and Koto came through the parted shoji.

"Now I interducing you to my mos' vaery nize friens, Mees Tominago Koto."

Koto was as anxious as Numè to please, and as she had seen Numè hold her two hands out in greeting, she did the same, very sweetly.

About an hour later Mrs. Davis, with Tom and Sinclair, looked in at the three girls. Cleo was sitting on the mats with Koto and Numè, and they were all laughing.

"Well, we've come for the invalid," said Tom, cheerily. "She has been out long enough."

"I have enjoyed my visit," she told them, simply. "And Numè," she turned to her, "Numè, will you kiss me?"

"Ess;" she paused a moment, bashfully, throwing a charming glance at Sinclair. "I kin kees—Mr. Sinka tich me."

They all laughed at this.

"An' now," she continued, "I inviting you to visit with me agin." She included them all with a bewitching little sweep of her hands, but her eyes were on the American girl's face. "An' also I lig' you to know thad Mr. Sinka promising to me thad he goin' tek me thad grade big United States. Now, thad will be nize. I egspeg you lig' me visite with you also. Yaes?"

"Of course; you would stay with us," Tom said, cordially.

"Thad is perlite," she breathed, ecstatically.

"Not polite, Numè," Sinclair corrected, smiling, "but, well—'nize,' as you would call it."

"Ah, yaes, of course. I beg pardons, egscuse. I mean thad liddle word 'nize.' Tha's foolish say 'perlite.'" She laughed at what she thought her own foolishness, and she was so pretty when she laughed.

Cleo turned to Sinclair. "I understand," she said, softly, "why you—you loved her. If I were a man I would too."

"Ah! thad is a regret," sighed Numè, who had overheard her and half understood. "Thad you nod a mans to luf with me. Aenyhow, I thing' I liging you without thad I be a mans. Sa-ay, I lig' you jus' lig' a—a brudder—no, lig' a mudder, with you." This was very generous, as the mother love is supreme in Japan, and Numè felt she could not go beyond that.

Cleo seemed very much absorbed on the way home. Tom was in the kurumma with her, Sinclair having stayed behind a while.

"Matsu is going back with us to America," she said. "I think she is a dear little thing, and I shall educate her." She was silent a moment, and then she said, very wistfully:

"Tom, do you suppose I can ever make up—atone for all my wickedness?" and Tom answered her with all the old loving sympathy.

"I never could think of you as wicked, sis—not wantonly so—only thoughtless."

"Ah, Tom—if I could only think so too!"

When the boat moved down the bay Cleo's and Tom's eyes were dim, and when the wharf was only a shadowy, dark line they still leaned forward watching a small white fluttering handkerchief, and in imagination they still saw the little doleful figure trying to smile up at them through a mist of tears.

And a week later the selfsame missionary who had given Sinclair so much work, and thereby helped him bear his trouble, married them—Sinclair and Numè. The girl was gowned all in white—the dress she had worn that first time Sinclair had met her.

About two years later a party of American tourists called on Sinclair. Among them were a few old acquaintances. They brought strange news. Cleo and Tom Ballard had been married for a month past!

Perhaps the most frequent visitors at the Sinclairs' are Mr. and Mrs. Shiku.

THE END.