You've come in the wrong way;
the entrance gate and ticket booth is below, as the sign shows."

"I wish to see Miss Latham," said Bradford, handing his card, and at
the same time with difficulty suppressing a violent desire to knock
the man down.

"Not at home," replied immovable Perkins, vouchsafing no further
information.

"Then take my card to Mrs. Latham," thundered Bradford, nettled by his
slip in not asking for both at the first instance, and; as the man still
hesitated, he strode past him through the porch and into the hall.

As Perkins disappeared through one of the many doorways, Bradford stood
still for a moment before his eyes focussed to the change of light. The
pillars of the hall that supported the balcony corridor of the second
story were wreathed with light green vines, delicate green draperies
screened the windows, the pale light coming from many Japanese lanterns
and exquisitely shaded bronze lamps rather than outside. Half a dozen
little arbours were formed by large Japanese umbrellas, under which tea
tables were placed, and the sweet air of the summer afternoon was
changed and made suffocatingly heavy by burning incense.

Of course all this paraphernalia belonged to the festival, and yet
Bradford was not prepared to find Sylvia living in such daily state as
the other surroundings implied. He knew that she belonged to a prosperous
family, but his entrance to what he supposed would be, as the name
implied, a country cottage, was a decided shock to him.

He had been drawn irresistibly toward Sylvia almost from their meeting
in the lecture room several years before, but he could hardly allow
himself the luxury of day dreams then, and it was not until his
promotion had seemed to him to place him upon a safe footing, that he
had paused long enough to realize how completely she was woven into all
his thoughts of the future. Now, as he waited there, a broad gulf, not a
crossable river, seemed to stretch before him, not alone financial but
ethical,--a sweeping troublous torrent, the force of which he could
neither stem nor even explain to himself,--verily the surging of the
Whirlpool at his feet.

Babbling girlish voices waked him from his revery, and half a dozen young
figures, disguised in handsomely embroidered Japanese costumes and
headgear, their eyes given the typical almond-shaped and upward slant by
means of paint and pencil, came down the stairs, followed a moment later
by a taller figure in