He would remember--when they had carried out the last awful reminder of the bloodshed that had been, and while Mr. Doane pressed a hand to his eyes as if in prayer--how he stood silent there on the gravel area, looking up into the trees and about at the dim quaint _pai-lows_ on either hand and at the pavilions behind them, each on its arch of stone over placid dark water; and how the lightly moving air of evening whispered through the trees, stirring, with the foliage, faintly musical little bells; and how, into this moment of calm, appeared, light of step, swinging her shopping bag as she descended the marble steps of the pavilion at the right and came forward under the _pai-lows_, the pale girl, Dixie Carmichael, who glanced respectfully toward Mr. Doane, and at Rocky himself raised her black eyebrows while her thin lips softly framed the one word, “You?” And then, after a few words--the girl said that Tex Connor and the Manila Kid made her come; it had been a terrible business; she thought both must have been, killed; she had contrived to hide--how Mr. Doane asked him to take her back to the women; and how they went, he and she, his heart beating hotly, out through the darkening gate where paper lanterns now moved about. He felt that for the first sharp blow at his new life. There would be other blows; doubtless through this girl; for the old life would not give him up without a fight.
He was to forget what they said, he and this unaccountable, cool girl, as he left her out there and hurried back; but would remember the picture he found on his return--Mr. Doane striding off deliberately into the darkness beyond the little white bridges, while the officer followed with a lantern, and the few soldiers, also with lanterns, straggled after. He would remember crowding himself past all of them, snatching one of the lanterns as he ran, and falling into step at the side of the huge determined man.
There were broad courtyards, then, and buildings with heavily curving roofs and columns richly colored and carved, with dim lights behind windows of paper squares. There were drunken soldiers, who ran away, and screaming women, and other women who would never scream or smile again. There was litter and splintered furniture and a broken-in door here and there. There was a familiar big soldier who plunged at Mr. Doane with a glinting blade in his hand; and then a sharp struggle that was to last, in retrospect, but an instant of time, for the clearer memory was of himself binding with his handkerchief a small cut in Mr. Doane's forearm while the soldiers carried out a wounded struggling giant, and then shouts and shots from the courtyard when the giant escaped. And he would remember picking up an unset ruby from the tiling and handing it to Mr. Doane. There was the picture, then, of a melancholy procession winding slowly through the grove with bobbing gay lanterns.