* * *

When the girl regained consciousness the house was dark. Slowly she
recalled the event that had culminated the uneventful day. She
wondered if Goyu had been lying or had gone crazy. The darkness was
not reassuring--her father always came home before dark, and his
absence now confirmed her fears. She wondered if the old servant had
deserted her. He was a poor stick anyway; Japanese men who had pride
or character no longer worked as domestics in the households of
foreigners.

Ethel Calvert was the daughter of an American grain merchant who
represented the interests of the North American Grain Exporters
Association at the seaport of Otaru, in Hokaidi, the North Island of
Japan. Three years before her mother had died of homesickness and a
broken heart--although the Japanese physician had called it
tuberculosis, and had prescribed life in a tent! Had they not
suffered discomforts enough in that barbarous country without adding
insult to injury?

Ethel was bountifully possessed of the qualities of hothouse beauty.
Her jet black hair hung over the snowy skin of her temples in
striking contrast. Her form was of a delicate slenderness and her
movement easy and graceful with just a little of that languid
listlessness considered as a mark of well-bred femininity. She knew
that she was beautiful according to the standards of her own people
and her isolation from the swirl of the world's social life was to
her gall and wormwood.

The Calverts had never really "settled" in Japan, but had merely