“Well, the lights are out and I don’t see that it matters much, Nancy-Bell.  Let’s go back and hear the rest of the song.”

“Won’t you come with me first to get my handkerchief?” pleaded Nancy.  “I know exactly where I left it, and I am afraid to go alone, if you want to know the real truth.”

“Oh, you little coward,” laughed Billie good-naturedly, taking her arm.  “Come along, then.”

The two young girls hastened down the long hall until they reached the passage.

“Billie,” whispered Nancy, pausing at the door.  “You won’t think me silly if I tell you this?  Of course it may have been imagination, but I was awfully frightened when I came in here just now.  I opened the door suddenly and ran into the room before I realized it was dark.  Then, of course, I stopped short.  The door had closed behind me and it seemed to me that some one else was in the room.  I remembered that as I opened the door I heard some one move or collide with a chair.  I stood perfectly still for an instant.  I was really frightened.  Then I just flew.”

“Perhaps it was one of the servants who had put out the lights and was afraid to acknowledge it,” suggested Billie.  “The little maids are as timid as wild things.”

“But every servant in the house is in the dining room, I tell you.  I saw them as I went down the hall, and I counted them just for fun.  There were the four little maids and Onoye and O’Haru and Komatsu and the three jinriksha men and the three old grandmothers and the gardener.  There aren’t any others.”

The door leading into the library was not a sliding panel of thick opaque paper, like the usual Japanese door, but a real European door of heavy wood with a brass handle.

“Don’t you think we had better get your father, Billie, or one of the boys?” whispered Nancy, placing a detaining hand on her friend’s arm.

“But that would be a needless alarm.  Everybody would want to know what was the matter.  There would have to be explanations and Cousin Helen would be frightened.  Besides, I am sure it was just your vivid imagination, Nancy.”

She opened the door very softly and peeped in.  The room was flooded with the radiance of two shaded lamps, both burning brightly; in fact, one had been turned up too high, as if lighted in haste.

“Oh,” gasped Nancy, in amazement.

But Billie was determined not to be surprised.

“Take my word for it, Nancy; one of the servants put out the lights by mistake, thinking we had finished in here for the night, and when you returned he or she was frightened and lit them again, thinking that honorable American young lady might be displeased.”

Nancy found her handkerchief.

“Very well,” she said.  “If that is your expert opinion I am willing to abide by it, but I was fright—­”

Before she could finish one of the long French windows blew open and a gust of wet wind extinguished the lamp on a table near the window.  Billie marched boldly over and closed and bolted the window.