“Sing!” commanded Bobby, and he joined obediently in the chorus.  As the night wore on a caressing coolness crept into the air, and the crowd gathered into a closer group.  Percival could feel Bobby breathing near him, and could look down undisturbed into her upturned face as she sang with passionate abandon to the moon.  She seemed to have entirely lost sight of her surroundings and was off on some high adventure of her own, leaving him free to watch her to his heart’s content.

It was a situation fraught with danger; yet he lingered.  He did more:  he slipped his hand beneath the rug and sought cautiously for hers.  As their palms met, and her small fingers closed responsively over his, such a thrill of satisfaction passed over him as he had never felt before.  His old wounds were suddenly healed, life became a passionate love-song on a languorous, moonlit sea.  But his ecstasy ceased with the music.  Bobby’s voice broke the spell with frightful distinctness: 

[Illustration:  “If you want to hold my hand, Mr. Hascombe, you are welcome to it.”]

“If you want to hold my hand, Mr. Hascombe, you are welcome to it.  Andy’s got the other one; but if you don’t mind, we’ll put them all together, like that, on top of the steamer-rug.”

During the laugh that followed he managed to got to his feet and make his escape.  He had never been so angry in his life; he even included himself in his devastating wrath.  Why shouldn’t he have been insulted, laughed at, jeered at!  When one allows oneself to associate with such people, he ought to expect such behavior.

"Plebeians!” he snarled as he jerked together the curtains of his berth and turned his face to the wall.

IX

DRAGGING ANCHOR

Of course, after what had happened, nothing could induce Percival to join the Weston party in Japan.  He left a note of formal regret, and hastened ashore on the first launch in the morning.  His one desire was to avoid those detestable young Americans, whose diabolical laughter had rung in his ears all night.  The wounds received by vanity are never serious, but they are very hard to heal, and as Percival stopped ashore in this strange land he felt that he was the most unhappy of mortals.

“Call a hansom,” he demanded impatiently of Judson, who stood grinning at the queer sights on the hatoba.

“There ain’t none, sir.”

“Of course; I forgot.  But how are we to get to the hotel?”

“Carn’t say, sir, unless we go in a couple of them perambulators.”

Percival took an instant dislike to a country that forced him to ride in a ridiculous vehicle, pulled by a small bare-legged brown man in a mushroom hat.  All the way to the hotel he was unhappy in the conviction that he was making a spectacle of himself.

The rooms which he had engaged in advance were not satisfactory, and it was not until he had inspected all the suites that were unoccupied that he decided upon one that commanded a view of the bay.  Once established therein, he despatched Judson for his mail and for any English papers that might be found, then took up his position by a front window and sternly watched the bund.