"I see you already have some knowledge of the cause of my delay." His voice was even, but a wound smarted. "It is quite true, senorita, that the first embassy to Japan, from which we hoped so much, was a humiliating failure, and that I was played with for six months by a people whom we had regarded as a nation of monkeys. When my health began to suffer from the long confinement on shipboard--we had previously been fourteen months at sea--and I asked to be permitted to live on shore while my claims to an audience were under consideration, I was removed with my suite to a cage on a strip of land nearly surrounded with water, where I had less liberty and exercise than on shipboard. Finally, I had a ridiculous interview with a 'great man,' in which I accomplished nothing but the preservation of what personal dignity a man may while sitting on his heels; the superb presents of the Tsar were returned to me, and I was politely told to leave. Japan wanted neither the friendship of Russia nor her gimcracks. That, senorita, is the history of the first Russian Embassy--for the tenta-tive visit of Adam Lanxmann, twelve years before, can be dignified by no such title--to Oriental waters.
It is to be hoped that Count Golofkin, who was to undertake a similar mission to China, has met with a better fate."
Underneath the polished armour of a man who was a courtier when he chose and the dominating spirit always, he was hot and quick of temper. His light cold eyes glowed with resentment at the danc-ing lights in hers, as he cynically gave her a bald abstract of the unfortunate mission. He reflected that commonly he would have fitted a different mask to the ugly skull of fact, but this young bar-barian, as he chose to regard her, excited the ele-mental truth in him, defying him to appear at his worst. He was astonished to see her eyes suddenly soften and her mouth tremble.
"It must have been a hateful experience--hate-ful!" Her voice, beginning on its usual low soft note, rose to a hoarse pitch of indignation. "I should have killed somebody! To be a man, and strong, and caressed all one's life by fortune--and to be as helpless as an Indian! Madre de dios!"
"I shall take my revenge," said Rezanov shortly; but the wound closed, and once more he became aware of the poignant sweetness of Castilian roses.
Concha wore one in her soft dusky hair, and an-other where the little round jacket of white linen, gaily embroidered with pink, met on her bosom.
But if sentiment tempted him he was quickly poised by her next remarks. She uttered them in a low tone, although the animated conversation of the rest of the party would have permitted the two on the sofa to exchange the vows of love unheard.
