Slowly the picture faded, and somewhere near me I heard the priestess of Lal sobbing.  
"You saw it, too?" I asked.
 
"Yes," she said, "I saw it too. And oh! I'm sorry for her, but it was better that than nothing. Far better that than nothing! There's nothing else in life like love—"
 
Suddenly, in the solemn hush of that dim, lamp-lighted room, I heard a chuckle of cynical amusement. The priestess of Lal heard it, too, and faced me with beautiful, blazing eyes, and flaming cheeks still damp with tears.
 
"Did you dare to laugh at me!" she cried. "I could kill you. Did you dare?"
 
"No," I said. "I believe, as you do, that love—"
 
Again that rustle of malicious laughter crept across the incense-laden air. In the eyes of the woman a sudden terror showed, and she shrank close to me.
 
"Who is it laughs?" she whispered. "This is not the first time I've heard it, when I spoke and thought of love. It—frightens me. But," she cried with sudden energy, "I will believe that love is everything. If it is not, what becomes of us poor women? Are our lives all wasted on a dream?"
 
"I do not know what it is that laughs," I said. "Some evil influence seems to dog my path, that turns all the smiling face of the earth to dust and ashes. But do not doubt, and I will not. True love is the one eternal thing in our mortal lives. It is greater than we are ourselves, and it is never wasted—"
 
Suddenly the flames, in their silver sockets, sucked upward once and then were gone, and we were left in inky darkness, the priestess of Lal and I, cowering close together like two frightened children, while ghostly garments rustled all about us, and ghostly voices whispered, and we saw what Okimi learned.
 
 
 
The girl Okimi is the daughter of parents who are poor and so honest that they sold their daughter for money to pay their debts, just as soon as it was possible. The girl went down to the ship and away across the radiant Inland Sea without shame, and without a murmur at her fate, for such things happen so often that the gods have no time to listen to complaints.
 
That is how she came to be living in a strange land, in a gilded house in a garden where big paper lanterns glow in the shrubbery every night. Okimi soon discovered the garden, and learned to be fairly happy there in her placid, childish way, tickling the gold-fish in the fountain basin with long blades of grass, and laughing to see them dart away, playing with the monkeys, and crooning little flower-songs to the big, unfriendly ylang-ylang.
 
It was all very well while the day lasted. But when the evening shadows began to gather in the corners, Mama San would call from the balcony, "Now, girls!" Okimi tried to be very obedient, and when Mama San called she would rush away as fast as she could, with her funny little toed-in steps, to dab on the rouge and put on the silken kimono and smile bravely over the samisen. Mama San said men like a girl who smiles and sings and is gay, and even Okimi was wise enough to know that the more men liked her, the sooner she would be free and back in sight of dear old Fuji. That's what she always called him, "dear old Fuji," a rather familiar name to give to a sacred mountain, but then Okimi was a little girl, and big Fujiyama had never seemed to mind.
 
Okimi never knew just how it came about that the girls, Haristo and Ghana and the rest, began to laugh at her and to say things in the English she found it so hard to understand. She just managed to make out these words: "Okimi San got sooeetart! Okimi San got sooeetart!" She ran to find her oracle, Mama San.
 
"What is this 'sooeetart'?" she demanded.
 
"It is a foreign custom," said Mama San. "These white men, they become as mad. It is one girl always, and if she speaks with another they are very 'jalous' and wish to fight."
 
"Oh, I know!" cried Okimi. "It is like their honorable marriage."
 
"It is not like the marriage of Nippon. They have somewhat that they call 'love.' They say always, 'I love yeeoo, sooeetart.' I have heard them. When I was young like you, I had many sooeetart," said Mama San, puffing complacently at her cigarette.
 
"And what is this thing 'love'?" Okimi persisted.
 
"Pshaw, child, how should I know? It is some madness inside one; we have it not in Japan. Run and play with the monkeys."
 
So Okimi went and played with the monkeys, and asked them what love is. She was a curious little thing. But they only grinned horribly at her and chattered, and the goldfish did not seem to know, and the ylang-ylang blossoms were silent about it, though she sang them her very prettiest song.
 
"Foolish flowers," she cried, "you do not know our tongue," and she flung them in the fountain basin and set the bright fish scurrying.
 
And still the girls, the tired-looking, laughing little girls, would cry, "Okimi San got sooeetart! Okimi San got sooeetart!" And still Okimi San went on asking the trees and the flowers and the birds, "What is sooeetart? What is this 'love'?" And they never could understand and answer.
 
Even Buddh would not tell her, even black, ugly, good little Buddh, who sat cross-legged above the pyramid of dough-cakes on the dresser and protected Okimi. Buddh would not tell her, though she asked him time and time again, with her head on the floor at his feet, as humbly as could be.
 
So one night when the man they called Sweetheart came, Okimi asked him. He looked blank at first, and she was afraid he was not going to tell her. Then suddenly he gathered her up in his arms, and kissed her on her laughing eyes and pouting lips and little, dimpled chin. "That is love," said he.
 
Now Okimi had long been practising that honorably foolish and disgusting foreign habit, the kiss. She tried hard, for Mama San, the oracle, said men like girls who know how to kiss. Generally she shut her eyes very tight and screwed up her lips and held her breath. But this time, when Sooeetart said, "This is love," and his lips touched hers, she seemed to have no breath at all, and her eyes stayed open and looked right into his, and—Okimi wriggled out of Sweetheart's arms and ran away as fast as she could with her funny little toed-in steps.
 
And all the girls together couldn't pull her back. But next morning she gave the juiciest orange to dear, ugly little Buddh who sat cross-legged in the corner and protected her.
 
She called Sweetheart "Jiji" after that. Jiji means old man, but if you know how to say it just right, it can mean dearest, littlest, biggest, belovedest old man. Okimi said it that way.
 
Jiji made a most delightful playmate, after Okimi had learned not to be afraid of him. He was so big; when he knelt on a cushion, one of his feet went under the bed, and she had to move a chair to make room for the other. And he was so strong, and insisted on carrying her all about the house in a sort of triumphal procession, whereat the monkeys and parrots chattered and shrieked in amazement, while Okimi kicked him in the ribs and cried "Gid ap" in Japanese, and swore at him innocently in Tagalo, the way she had heard the native coachman talk to his horses. Such romps as they used to have.
 
But she liked the quiet hours best, when they were alone together, and the samisen waked the echoes of a thousand sorrows. It was sweet to hear the echoes of the sorrows, and then look into Jiji's eyes. And then he had to see if anything had changed since his last visit, and they would make an important tour of inspection, hand in hand. There was the little pot of iris which she was trying so hard to make live in this strange land. And the wrinkled old dwarf of a pine-tree, not much taller than Jiji's longest finger. And there was Buddh, who sat behind the little bowl of blazing oil and protected Okimi. Often, after Jiji was asleep, she would creep out very softly to kneel and say, "Dear Buddh, mighty Buddh, now we know what love is. We thank thee for telling us." And ugly little Buddh, sitting there cross-legged in the tiny, flickering spot of light, smiled back at her most knowingly.
 
All the girls liked Jiji. He was always making them laugh, and laughter is a pleasant thing. Somehow the food wouldn't stay on his chop-sticks, and so one or two of them must come to his relief. They would pick out the snowiest grains of rice for him, and the juiciest bits of fish and seaweed, and the fattest of the little green plums. Sometimes they would get to racing with each other, and pop things into Jiji's mouth till he could only hold up his hands and shake his head in mournful protest. Then, when he got his breath, he was as likely to say "Doyo mashi tashi" as anything.
 
Jiji was very proud of his accomplishment in the language. He had one phrase which he used as often as he could. It was "Sayonara de gans," and it always made the girls laugh very heartily, for they didn't know what "de gans" meant. Jiji didn't know either, so when they laughed he thought he had made a joke in an unfamiliar tongue, and he laughed, too. Then they would all laugh, and Jiji would go swinging down to his carriage with his big strides, and the girls would all crowd to the window and call after him, as he drove away, "Sayonara! Goo' bye, Jiji San. Sayonara de gons!"
 
Okimi didn't run to the window with the rest, but hid in her room, those days, and was very busy. A festival of her people was approaching, and she had determined to make for Jiji the very beautifullest kimono that ever was known. From Kobe came a bolt of silk, the wonderful cr............