er eagerness in the beginning, lest it reveal
her ignorance of the marvels of mankind! The terror and ecstasy of
that night in Singapore--the first city she had ever seen! There
was still the impression that something akin to a miracle had
piloted her successfully from one ordeal to another.

The clerk at the Raffles Hotel had accorded her but scant interest.
She had, it was true, accepted doubtfully the pen he had offered.
She had not been sufficiently prompted in relation to the ways of
caravansaries; but her mind had been alert and receptive. Almost at
once she had comprehended that she was expected to write down her
name and address, which she did, in slanting cobwebby lettering,
perhaps a trifle laboriously. Ruth Enschede, Hartford, Conn. The
address was of course her destination, thousands of miles away, an
infinitesimal spot in a terrifying space.

She could visualize the picture she had presented, particularly the
battered papier-mache kitbag at her feet. In Europe or in America
people would have smiled; but in Singapore--the half-way port of
the world--where a human kaleidoscope tumbles continuously east and
west, no one had remarked her.

She would never forget the agony of that first meal in the great
dining room. She could have dined alone in her room; but courage
had demanded that she face the ordeal and have done with it. Every
eye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensation
to be the conceit of her imagination.

The beautiful gowns and the flashing bare shoulders and arms of the
women had disturbed and distressed her. Women, she had been taught,
who exposed the flesh of their bodies under the eyes of man were in
a special catagory of the damned. Almost instantly she had
recognized the fallacy of such a statement. These women could not
be bad, else the hotel would not have permitted them to enter!
Still, the scene presented a riddle: to give immunity to the black
women who went about all but naked and to damn the white for
exposing their shoulders!

She had eaten but little; all her hunger had been in her eyes--and
in her heart. Loneliness--something that was almost physical: as if
the vitality had been taken out of the air she breathed. The
longing to talk to someone! But in the end she had gone to her room
without giving in to the craving.

Once in the room, the door locked, the sense of loneliness had
dropped away from her as the mists used to drop away from the
mountain in th