ill, sounded the trilling of frogs.

As the two on the pagoda stood listening,--

"It was before Rome," she declared thoughtfully. "Before Egypt, and has
never changed. You and I are just--" She broke off, humming:--

"Only here and now? Behold
They were the same in years of old!"

Her mood colored the scene: the aged continuity of life oppressed him.
Yet he chose rather to watch the straggling battlements, far off, than
to meet her eyes or see her hair gleaming in the sun. Through many
troubled days he had forgotten her, despised her, bound his heart in
triple brass against a future in her hateful neighborhood; and now,
beside her at this time-worn rail, he was in danger of being happy. It
was inglorious. He tried to frown.

"You poor boy." Suddenly, with an impulse that must have been generous,
she rested her hand on his arm. "I was sorry. I thought of you
so often."

At these close quarters, her tremulous voice and searching upward glance
meant that she alone understood all his troubles. He started, turned for
some rush of overwhelming speech, when a head popped through the window
behind them.

"Boot and saddle, Mrs. Forrester," announced Heywood. His lean young
face was very droll and knowing. "We're leaving, bottom-side."

"Thank you so much, Maurice," she answered, perhaps dryly. "You're a
dear, to climb all those dreadful stairs."

"Oh!" said Heywood, with his gray eyes fastened on Rudolph, "no
trouble."

All three went down the dark well together.

When the company were mounted, and trooping downhill through the camphor
shadow, Heywood's pony came sidling against Rudolph's, till legging
chafed legging.

"You blossomed, old boy," he whispered. "Quite the star, after your
comedy turn." He reined aside, grinning. "What price sympathy on
a pagoda?"

For that moment, Rudolph could have struck down the one sure friend he
had in China.

CHAPTER VII

IPHIGENIA

"Don't chop off a hen's head with a battle-axe." Heywood, still with a
malicious, friendly quirk at the corners of his mouth, held in his
fretful pony. Rudolph stood bending a whip viciously. They two had
fetched a compass about the town, and now in the twilight were parting
before the nunnery gate. "A tiff's the last thing I'd want with you. The
lady, in confidence, is not worth--"

"I do not wish," declared Rudolph, trembling,--"I do not wish you to say
those things, so!"

"Right!" laughed the other, and his pony wheeled at t