ratefully accepted as types were nothing more than
marionettes, which the author behind the booth manipulated not badly
but perfunctorily. The diction was exquisite; there was style; but now
as she read there was lacking the one thing that stood for life, blood.
It did not pulsate in the veins of these people. Until now she had not
recognized this fact, and she was half-way through the book. She even
took the trouble to reread the chapter she had thought peculiarly
effective. There was the same lack of feeling. What had happened to
her since yesterday? To what cause might be assigned this opposite
angle of vision, so clearly defined?

The book fell upon her knees, and dreamily she watched the perspective
open and divaricate. Full in her face the south wind blew, now warmed
by the sun and perfumed by unknown spices. She took in little sharp
breaths, but always the essence escaped her. The low banks with their
golden haze of dust, the cloudless sky, the sad and lonely white
pagodas, charmed her; and the languor of the East crept stealthily into
her northern blood. She was not conscious of the subtle change; she
only knew that the world of yesterday was unlike that of today.

Warrington, after depositing Rajah in the stateroom, sought the bench
on the stern-deck. He filled his cutty with purser-loaned tobacco, and
roundly damned himself as a blockhead. He had forgotten all the
niceties of civilization; he no longer knew how to behave. What if she
had been curious? It was natural that she should be. This was a
strange world to her, and if her youth rosal-tinted it with romance,
what right had he to disillusion her? The first young woman in all
these years who had treated him as an equal, and he had straightway
proceeded to lecture her upon the evils of traveling alone in the
Orient! Double-dyed ass! He had been rude and impudent. He had seen
other women traveling alone, but the sight had not roused him as in the
present instance. In ten years he had not said so much to all the
women he had met; and without seeming effort at all she had dragged
forth some of the half-lights of his past. This in itself amazed him;
it proved that he was still weak enough to hunger for human sympathy,
and he of all men deserved none whatever. He had been a fool as a boy,
a fool as a man, and without doubt he would die a fool. He was of half
a mind to leave the boat at Prome and take the train down to Rangoon.

And yet h