know it. I know it."

"How do you know it, my child? Has he told you the real reason for his
being in Japan? Has he told you why fear suddenly overtakes and confuses
him? Or has he only dared to tell you other things?"

A joyous little sob caught in her throat. "His lips have told me
nothing, Ursula. His eyes and my heart have told me all."

"And without knowing these things you love him, Zura?"

"Love him," she echoed softly. "Right or wrong, I love him absolutely!"

I looked at the girl in amazed wonder. There seemed to be an inner
radiance as if her soul had been steeped in some luminous medium. She
came nearer, her young face held close to mine. "Oh, I am so happy, so
blissfully happy! For good or not, it's love for eternity. Dear, kind
old friend!"--inclosing my face with her hands, she kissed me on the
lips. In that faraway time of my babyhood my mother's good-by kiss was
the last I had known. The rapture of the girl's caress repaid long,
empty years. For a moment I was as happy as she. Then I remembered.

All day I had seen love perform miracles, and, like some invisible
power, regulate the workings of life as some deft hand might guide a
piece of delicate machinery; but that anybody could be happy, radiantly
happy, with shadows and detectives closing around the main cause of
happiness was farther than I could stretch my belief in the transforming
power of joy. Surely this thing called "love" was either farseeing
wisdom or shortsighted foolishness.

XVII

A VISIT TO THE KENCHO

The North Wind began a wild song through the trees in the night. It tore
at the mountains with the fury of an attacking army. It lashed the
waters of the sea into a frenzy. With the dawn came the snow. Softly and
tenderly it wrapped the earth in a great white coverlet, hushing the
troubled notes of the savage storm music into plaintive echoes of a
lullaby. As it grew light a world of magic beauty greeted my eyes.
Winter was King, but withal a tender monarch wooing as his handmaidens
the beauties of early spring. The great Camellia trees gave lavishly of
their waxen flowers, brocading the snow in crimson. Young bamboo
swinging low under the burden, edged its covering of white down with a
lacy fringe of delicate green. The scene should have called forth a hymn
of praise; but the feelings which gripped me more nearly matched the
clouds rolled in heavy gray masses over land and sea.

Page was to call for me at ten. Long be