you they are but near at hand,
Only now and here?--Behold.
They were the same in years of old!"

In her plaintive interlude, the slant-eyed servants watched her, nodding
and muttering under the camphor trees.

"And here's a song of exile," she said. "I render it very
badly."--Rudolph had never seen her face like this, bending intently
above the lute. It was as though in the music she found and disclosed
herself, without guile.

"...Blue was the sky,
And blue the rice-pool water lay
Holding the sky;
Blue was the robe she wore that day.
Alas, my sorrow! Why
Must life bear all away,
Away, away,
Ah, my beloved, why?"

A murmur of praise went round the group, as she put aside the
instrument.

"The sun's getting low," she said lightly, "and I _must_ see that view
from the top." Chantel was rising, but sat down again with a scowl, as
she turned to Rudolph. "You've never seen it, Mr. Hackh? Do come help
me up."

Inside, with echoing steps, they mounted in a squalid well, obscurely
lighted from the upper windows, toward which decaying stairs rose in a
dangerous spiral, without guard-rail. A misstep being no trifle, Rudolph
offered his hand for the mere safety; but she took it with a curious
little laugh. They climbed cautiously. Once, at a halt, she stood very
close, with eyes shining large in the dusk. Her slight body trembled,
her head shook with stifled merriment, like a girl overcome by mischief.

"What a queer little world!" she whispered. "You and I here!--I never
dreamed you could be funny. It made me so proud of you, down there!"

He muttered something vague; and--the stairs ending in ruin at the
fourth story--handed her carefully through the window to a small outer
balustrade. As they stood together at the rail, he knew not whether to
be angry, suspicious, or glad.

"I love this prospect," she began quietly. "That's why I wanted you to
come."

Beyond the camphors, a wide, strange landscape glowed in the full,
low-streaming light. The ocean lay a sapphire band in the east; in the
west, on a long ridge, undulated the gray battlements of a city, the
antique walls, warmed and glorified, breasting the flood of sunset. All
between lay vernal fields and hillocks, maidenhair sprays of bamboo, and
a wandering pattern of pink foot-paths. Slowly along one of these, a
bright-gowned merchant rode a white pony, his bells tinkling in the
stillness of sea and land. Everywhere, like other bells more tiny and
shr