to the
dismounting trio. "Mr. Hackh, you should have come spurring."

Rudolph advanced, pale, but with a calmness of which, afterward, he was
justly proud. The heroine of the moment turned toward him quickly, with
a look more natural, more sincere, than she had ever given him.

"Is this Mr. Hackh?" she said graciously. "I've heard so much about
you!"

The young man himself was almost deceived. Was there a German mail-boat?
Was there a club, from which he had stolen out while she wept,
ignominiously, in that girl's arms? And then of a sudden he perceived,
with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had
never spoken. His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was
wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge. For the first
time, he recalled that this quiet girl had been beautiful, the other
night; and though now by day that beauty was rather of line than of
color, he could not understand how it had been overlooked. Tiffin,
meanwhile, sped by like an orgy. He remembered asking so many questions,
about the mission hospital and her school for orphans, that the girl
began at last to answer with constraint, and with puzzled, sidelong
scrutiny. He remembered how even the tolerant Heywood shot a questioning
glance toward his wine-glass. He remembered telling a brilliant story,
and reciting "Old Captain Mau in Vegesack,"--rhymes long forgotten, now
fluent and spontaneous. The applause was a triumph. Through it, as
through a haze, he saw a pair of wide blue eyes shining with startled
admiration.

But the best came when the sun had lowered behind the grove, the company
grown more silent, and Mrs. Forrester, leaning beside the door of the
tower, turned the great pegs of a Chinese lute. The notes tinkled like a
mandolin, but with now and then an alien wail, a lament unknown to the
West. "Sing for us," begged the dark-eyed girl; "a native song." The
other smiled, and bending forward as if to recollect, began in a low
voice, somewhat veiled, but musical and full of meaning. "The Jasmine
Flower," first; then, "My Love is Gathering Dolichos"; and then she
sang the long Ballad of the Rice,--of the husband and wife planting side
by side, the springing of the green blades, the harvest by millions upon
millions of sheaves, the wealth of the State, more fragrant to ancestors
than offerings of spice:--

"...O Labor and Love and hallowed Land!
Think you these things are but still to come?
Think