Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/204

, and was oblivious to most of the new. Mr. Bolliver, with a sigh, would point out an ancient shrine on the opposite side of the street, while they passed, unseeing, some American atrocity on the near side. But there was still the sliding music of samisens behind paper lattices, still the drone of gourd-beating priests in half-lit temples, the pad of rickshaw runners' feet, the sight of stately robes and obis tied according to a tradition that has lasted a hundred centuries.

They walked back in the dusk, when every rickshaw had lighted a flitting paper lantern and the water beneath the curved bridges gleamed with the reflection of many-colored lights. So brief a glimpse of Japan—yet it had been so very Japanese and so like a thing unreal made actual for a moment. Then the ship again and the outward way once more, this time, at last, for Shanghai!

Jane, curling rapturously to sleep in her cabin, whispered, "We're coming—coming—coming!" with the thrum of the engine.

Mr. Bolliver, very wide awake in his, paced up and down.