Before the final farewell he had felt a touch of pity for the "poor little gypsy," but when he mounted the stairs to her room for the last time he heard her singing, and mingled with her voice was a strange metallic sound, dzinn, dzinn! as of coins ringing on the floor.

Is she amusing herself with quoits, or the jeu du crapaud, or pitch and toss?
He creeps in, and there, dressed for the departure to her mother's, sitting on the floor is Chrysantheme; and spread out around her all the fine silver dollars he had given her according to agreement the night before.

"With the competent dexterity of an old money changer she fingers them, turns them over, throws them on the floor, and armed with a little mallet ad hoc, rings them vigorously against her ear, singing the while I know not what little pensive, birdlike song, which I dare say she improvises as she goes along.

Well, after all, it is even more completely Japanese than I could possibly have imagined it--this last scene of my married life! I feel inclined to laugh." And he commends the little gypsy's worldly wisdom, offers to make good any counterfeit piece which she may find, and refuses to permit her to see him go aboard of his ship.

She does, nevertheless, along with the Japanese wives of four of his fellow officers, who peep at their flitting husbands through the curtains of their sampans.