"My father!" she whispered. "My own father!"

Queerly the room and its objects receded and vanished; and there
intervened a series of mental pictures that so long as she lived
would ever be recurring. She saw the moonlit waters, the black
shadow of the proa, the moon-fire that ran down the far edge of the
bellying sail, the silent natives: no sound except the slapping of
the outrigger and the low sibilant murmur of water falling away
from the sides--and the beating of her heart. The flight.

How she had fought her 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-mâché kitbag at her feet. In Europe or in America
people would have smiled; but in Singapore--the half-way port of