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 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.