The evening world. Newspaper, September 22, 1922, Page 28

THE CHARACTERS IN THE STORY, THE HONORABLE GEOFFREY BARRINGTON, son of Lord Brandan, a Captain in the British Army, resigns his commission when he weds ASAKO FUJINAMI, heiress, daughter of Japanese parents who are dead, brought up and educated im s‘rench convent schools and introduced to London society by LADY EVERINGION, a brilliant matchmaker, who did not foresee the result of the bringing together of the two. At the reception toasts are drunk to .he closer union of Britain and japan, but both British and Japanese diplomats in the distinguished company evade the suggestion that the couple visit Japan as appears to be their desire, Some of the reception guests frankly question the wisdom of the rarrriage and doubt the possibility of a happy life tor the pair. Lady Everington, in her anxiety for tlte young Captain, who has been her special protege, interviews COUN! SAITO, the Japanese Ambassador, who tells her the Fujinamis belong to the nouveaux riches of japan, but gives little information of their origin or the source of their wealth. A visit to his wife's guardians, the Muratrs, a Japanese family living :n Paris, and a sojourn among the cosmopolitans of Deauville sharpen the desire to see Japan. Aboard the ship they meet VISCOUNT KAMIMURA, returning home to wed a bride chosen by his family, whom he has never seen: A stop at Nagasaki is the first sight of real Japan. A part of the revelation 1s the Chonkina, or Geisha dance, seen hy Barrington in company with two knglish acquaintances. Barrington is shocked by the performance. He is disturbed to learn from the talk ot Amenicans and Englishmen that marriages with Japanese women are not favorably regarded. TANAKA, a nondescript Japanese, attaches himself to the Barringtons, follows them everywhere and acccmpanies them to Tokyo, where Geoffrey meets REGGIE FORSYTH, Attache of che British Embassy, musical and romantic, shaking off old attachments in Paris for a new one in Japan, the novelty being YAE SMITH, daughter of a Japanese mother and an English father. Bar- 3 rington meets Miss Smith, who smokes and languishes in Forsyth’s apart- ments at the Embassy. Barrington, trom a talk with LADY CYNTHIA CAIRNS, wife of the British Ambassador, learns of Yae's ‘many—some fatal—love affairs and of the Embassy's disapproval of For- syth’s engagement to the voung woman. & ITO, lawyer tor the ruyinami estate, who has made regular remittances to Mrs. Barrington, rranges for her and her husband to meet the Fu- jinamis of lokyo, the entertainments fail to impress Barrington, to whom Japanese family custo.ns seem o¢ and contradictory. A family business conterence discloses the tact that the Fujanami income is derived from the Geisha house privileges in | okyo and elsewhere. At the same conference Asako's marnage to Barrington 1s discussed, the decision being that cine should be married to a Japanese, the matter of divorce being easy. Under the tutelage of her cousin, ‘ASAKO, Barrington’s bride begins to learn something of Japanese family cus- toms and hear about her father and mother, the one a poet, the other a delicate, clinging little woman who died when Asako was born. CHAPTER XV.—Continued. not without dignity, like an old mon- Eurasia. arch en disponibilite, to the vacant throne of the Hurasian limbo, where © THOSE after- ner rule is undisputed. noons began Every Friday afternoon you may which so soon see her presiding over her little court darkened into 1s the Miyasek sabato, with its ire 0! Inge! ust he evenings, while pourbonian features, the lofty white Reggio sat at wig, the elephantine form, the rus- the plano play- tling taffeta, and the ebony stick ing his thoughts with its ivory handle, leads one’s thoughts backward to the days of aloud, and the Richardson and Sterne, sirl lay on the “But her loyal subjects who sur- sofa or squatted round her—it is impossible to place on the big cush- them. They are poor, they are un- fon by the fire, tidy, they are restless. Their black with cigarettes within reach and @ glass of quor hair is straggling, their brown eyes wrapped in an atmosphere of laziness are soft, their clothes are desperately European, but ill-fitting and tired. and well-being such as shé had never Then Reggie would ‘They chatter together ceaselessly and rapidly like starlings with curious {n- fe would sit down be- take her on his fiections in their English speech and Phrases snatched up from the ver- macular, They are forever glancing and whispering, bursting at times into wild peals of laughter which lack the authentic ring of gladness. They are @ people of shadows blown by the harsh winds of destiny across the face of a land where they can find no per- manent resting place. They are the children of Eurasia, the unhappiest people on earth. It was among these people that Yae's lot was cast. She stepped into an immediate ascendancy over th in, thanks to her beauty, her personality and, above all, to her money. Baron- ess Miyazaki saw at once that she had arival in Eurasia. She hated her, but waited calmly for the opportunity to assist in her inevitable collapse, a woman of wide experience watching the antics of a girl innocent and giddy, the Baroness playing the part of Elizabeth of England to Yae's Mary Queen of Scots, Meanwhile, Yae was learning what the Eurasian girls were whispering about so continually—love affairs, in- trigues with secretaries of South American legations, secret engage- ments, disguised messages. This seed fell upon soll well pre- pared. Her father had been a repro- bate till the day of his death, when he had sent for his favorite Japanese girl to come and massage the pain out of his wasted body, Her brothers had one staple topic of conversation which they did not hesitate to discuss be- fore their sister—geisha, assignation houses and the licensed quarters. Yae's mind was formed to the idea that for grown-up people there is one absorbing distraction, which is to be found in the company of the oppr-'te ex. There was no talk in the Smith's bome of the romance of marriage, of the love of parents and children, which might have turned this pre- cocious preoccupation in a healthy direction, The talk was of women all the time, of women as instruments of pleasure, Nor could Mrs, Smith, the Japanese mother, guide her daugh- ter's steps. She was a creature of duty, dry-featured and self-effaced, She did her utmost for her children's physical wants, she nursed them de- votedly in sickness, she attended to their clothes and to their comforts. But she did not attempt to influence their morai ideas, She had given up any hope of undorstanding her gius- band, She schooled herself to pt everything without surprise, Poor He was « foreigner end had o by unnoticed. She talked to yut herself, about the daily of her home, its sadness and since her father died. He |. ,He had never time or his money for he’ She had been brought up like a little princess. She had been utterly He had transfgrred to her when she was sixteen, he had died, Jeaving as his last command to th who would obey him ing, the strict injunction that Yae was to have her own way always and In_ everything. He left a respectable fortune, a Japanese widow and two worthless cons. Poor Yae! Surrounded by the friends and amusements of an Eng- lish girl's life, the qualities of her happy disposition might have borne thelr natural fruit. But at her father’s death she found herself isolated, without friends and without amuse- ments. She found herself marooned The Japanese have no use for the half-castes; and the Europeans look down upon them, ‘They dwell apart in a limbo of which Baroness Miyazaki ts the acknowl- edged queen. Baroness Miyazaki is a stupendous old lady, whose figure might be drawn from some eighteenth century comedy. Her late hushand—and gos~ sip says that she was his landiady during a-period of study in England held a high position in the Impertal Courty His wife, by a pomposity of and an assumption of su- succeeded, where t' , With its\ aitches dropped in, among the high lier husband died; ana Ohn Paris. it INustrated By will.B. Johnstone. fox (1. ¢. he was ); and un- fortunately his children had Inherited this incorrigible animal, To please her daughter she opened up her house for hospitality with un- seomly promptitude after her hus- band’s death, The Smiths gave fre. quent dances, well attended by young people of the Tokyo foreign com- munity. At the first of these seri Yae listened to the passionate plead- ings of m young man called Héskin, a clerk in an English firm. On the second opportualty she became en- aged to him. On the third, she was struck with admiration and awe by a South American diplomat with the green ribbon of # Bolivian order tied across his false shirt front. Don Quebrado d’Acunha was a practiced hand at seduction and Yae became one of his ‘victims soon after her seventeenth birthday, and just ten days before her admirer sailed away to rejoin his legitimate spouse in Guayaquil, The engagement with Hoekin still lingered on; but the young man, who adored her, was haggard and pale. Yae had a new follower, a teacher of English in a Japanese school, who recited beautifully and wrote poetry about her. Then Baroness Miyazaki judged that her time was ripe. She sum- moned young Hoskin into her dow- ager presence, and, with a manner heavily matern: she warned him against the Hghtness of his fiancee, When he refused to believe evil of her she produced a pathetic letter full of half-confessions, which the girl her- self had written to her in a moment Al At Mfr qyy' ' Nh WRAY anne “BEFORE HE COULD REA- LIZE WHAT WAS HAPPENING HE FELT THE SOFT KIMONO SLEEVES LIKE WINGSAROUND HIS NECK AND THE GIRL’S BURNING MOUTH PRESSING HIS LIPS.” of expansion. A week later the young man’s body was washed ashore near Yokohama, Yae was sorry to hear of the acci- dent; but she had long ceased to bo interested in Hoskin, the reticence of whose passion had seemed like a touch of ice to her fevered nerves. But this was Baroness Miyazak!’s op- oportunity to discredit Yae, to crush her rival out of serious competition and to degrade her to the demi- monde. It was done promptly and ruthlessly for the Baroness's gossip carried weight throughout the diplo- matic, professional and missimnary circles, even where her person was held in ridicule. The facts of Hos- kin's suicide became known. Nice women dropped Yae entirely, and bad men ran after her with redoubled vest. Yae did not realize her os- tracism, The Smith's dances next winter be- camé So many competitions for the daughter's corruption, and were ren- dered brilliant by the presence of sev- eral of the young officers attached to the British Embassy, who made the running and finally monopolized the prize, Next year the Smiths acquired a motor car, which soon became Yae's special perquisite, She would disap- pear for whole days and nights, None of her family could restrain her. Her answer to all remonstrances was: “You do what you want; I do what T want, That summer two English officers whom she especially favored fought a duel with pistols—for her beauty or for her honor, The exact motive re- mained unknown, One was seriously wounded; and both of them had to leave the country. Yao was grieved by this sudden loss of both her lovers, It left her in @ condition of double widowhood from which she was most anxious to oa. cape, But now she wns becoming more fastidious, The schoo! teachers and tho cingow fascinated her no longer, Ser soldier friends had in- troduced her inte embassy circles, and she wished to remain there, Bho fixed on Aubrey Laking for her next attempt, but from him she received her first rebuff. Having lured him into a tete-a-tete, as her method was, she asked him for counsel in the con- duct of her life. “It I were you," he sald dryly, ‘I should go to Paris or Néw York. You will find much more scope there." Fortunately fate soon exchanged Aubrey Laking for Reggie Forsyth. He was just what suited her—for a time. But a certain impersonality in his admiration, his fits of reverie, the ascendancy of music over his mind, made her come to regret her more masculine lovers. And it was just at this moment of dissatisfaction that she first saw Geoffrey Barrington, and thought how lovely he would look in his uniform. From that mo- ment desire entered her heart. Not that she wanted to lose Reggie; the peace and harmony of his surround- ings soothed her like a warm and scented bath, But she wanted’ both. She had had two before, and had found them complimentary to one an- other and agreeable to her, She wanted to sit on Geoffrey's knee and to feel his strong arms around her. But she must not be too sudden in her advances, or she would lose him as she had lost Laking. It is easy to condemn Yae as a bad girl, a born cocotte. Yet such a judgment would not’ be entirely equitable. She was a laughter-lov- (Seo TILT Pre rs ing little creature, a child of the sun. She never sought to do harm to any- body. Rather she was over-amiable. She wised aboye all to make her men friends happy and to be pleasing in their eyes, Sho was never swayed by mercenary motives. She was to be won by admiration, by good looks, and by personal distinction, but never by money. If she tired of her lovers somewhat rapidly, it was as a child tires of a game or a book, and leaves it forgotten, to start another. She was a child with bad habits, rather than a mature sinner. It never occurred to her that, because Geof- frey Barrington was married, he at least ought to be immune from her attack. In her dreams of an earthly paradise there was no marrying or giving in marriage, only the sweet mingling of breath, the quickening of the heart-beats like the pulsation of her beloved motorcar, the sound as of violin arpeggios rising higher and ever higher, the pause of the ecstatic moment when the sense of time ts lost—and then the return to earth on lazy languorous wings like a sea-gull floating motionless on a shoreward breeze. Such was Yae'’s ideal of Love and Life too, It is not for us to condemn Yae, but rather should we censure the blasphemy of mixed marriages which has brought into existence these thistledown children of a realm which has no kings or priests, or laws or parliaments, ‘or duty or tradition, or hope for the future, which has not even an acre of dry ground for its heritage or any concrete symbol of its soul—the Cimmerian land of Durasia, Reggie Forsyth understood the Pathos of the girl's position; and be- ing @ rebel and en anarchist at hoart, ho readily condoned the faults which she confided to him frankly, Grad- ually Pity, most dangorous of all Sounsollers, revealed ler to him aa a wirl romantioally unfortunate, who Hover hud a fulr chance in life, who heen the spert of tad men and fools, who needed onty q measure ef true friendship and affection for the Ratural sunshine of her disposition to wouter the rank vapors her COPYRIGHT, I922. BY GON! AND LIVERIGHT, soul's night. What Reggie grasped only in that one enlightened moment when he had christened her “Lamia, was the tragic fact that she had no val CHAPTER XVI. The Great Buddha. Tsukt-yo yoshi Tachitau itau etsu Miteu-no-hama, The seashore of Mitsu! Standing, sitting or lying down. How lovely is the moonlight night! EFORE the tris had quite B faded, and before the azaleas of Hiblya were set ablaze—in Japan they count the months by the blossoming of the flow- ers—Reggie Forsyth had deserted Tokio for the Joys of sea bathing at Kamakura. He attended at the Em- vassy for office hours during tho morning, but returned to the sea- side directly after lunch. ‘This de- parture disarranged Geoffrey's schem for his friend’s salvation, for he was not prepared to go the length of sac- rifling his dally game of tennis, “What do you want to leave us for?" he remonstrated “The bathing,” sala tteggie, “la heavenly. Besides, next month I have to go into villegiatura with my chief. I must prepare myself for the strain with prayer and fasting. But why don't you come down and join us?” “Is there any tennis?" asked Geof- trey. “There is a court, a grass court with holes in it; but I’ve never seen anybody playing."* “Then what ‘s there to do?’ “Oh, bathing and sleeping and dig- ging in the sand and looking at tem- ples and bathing agein; and next week there is a dance.” “Well, we might come down for that if her ladyship agrees. How 18 ia? “Don’t call her that, please. She has got a soul after all, But it ts rather a disobedient one. It runs away like a little dog, and go rabbit- hunting for days on end, She is in great form, Wo wr'r in the moon light." “Then I think it is quite liuuwe I dtd come," said Geoffrey, So the Barringtons arrived in their sumptuous car on the afternoon be- » of which Reggie For- On the beach they found him ‘in a blue bathing costume sitting under an enormous paper umbrella with Miss smith and the gipsy half-caste girl. Yae wore a cotton kimono of blue and white, and she lookea like a figurine from a Nanking vase. “Geoffrey,” sald the young diplo- mat, “como into the sea at once. You look thoroughly dir Do you like sea-bathing, Mrs. Barrington?” “1 have only paddled," sald Asako, “when I was a ilttle girl.” Geoffrey could not resist the temp- tation of the blue water and the lazy curling waves. In a few minutes tho two men were walking down to the sea's edge, Geoffrey laughing at Reg- gie's chatter, His arms were akimbo, with hands on the hips, hips which looked like the boles of a mighty oak- tree, He touched the ground with the elasticity of Mercury; he pushed through the air with the shoulders of Hercules, The line of his back was a steel blade, In his hair the sun's reflection shone like wires of gold, The Gods were come down In the somblance of mon, Yao did not repress a sharp intako of hor breath; and she squcezed tho hand of the gipsy girl ae if pain had " husband ta!" sho “What a splendid pod ker, fow big your wald to Asako, man Asako thought of her huaband es “dear old Geoffrey.” She never crit!- clged bis points; nor did she think that Yae's admiration was in very good taste. However, she accepted it as a clumsy compliment from an uneducated girl who knew no better. ‘The gipsy companion watched with a peculiar smile, She understood the range of Yao's admiration. “Isn't it a pity they have to wear bathing dress?" Miss Smith went on. “It's so ugly. Look at the Japanese. Farther along the beach some Japa- nese men were bathing. They threw their clothes down on the sand and ran into the water with nothing on their bodies except a strip of white cotton knotted rofind the loins. They dashed into the sea with thelr arms lifted above their head, shouting wildly like savage devotees calling upon thelr gods, The sea sparkled Ike silver round their tawny skin. Their torsos were well formed and hardy; their dwarfed and 1il-shaped legs were hidden by the waves. C tainly they presented an artistic con- trast with the sodden olue of the for- elgners’ bathing sults, But Asako, brought up to the strict ideals of con- vent modesty, sald: “T think it's disgusting; the police ought to stop those people bathing with no clothes on.” The dust and sun of the motor ride, the constant anxiety lest they might run over some doddering old woman or some heedless child, had given her a headache. As soon as Geoffrey re- turned from his dip, she announced that she would go back to her room. As the headache continued, she abandoned the fdea of dancing. She would go to bed and listen to the musio in the distance. Geoffrey wished to stay with her, but she would not hear of ft. She knew that her husband was fond of dancing; she thought that the change and the brightness would be good for him. “Don’t flirt with Yae Smith,” she smiled, as he gave her the last kiss, “or Reggie will be jealous." At first Geoffrey was bored. He did not know many of the dancers, business people frém Yokohama, most of them, or strangers stopping at the hotel. Thelr appearance de~ pressed him. The women had hard faces, the lustre was gone from thelr hair, they wore ill-fitting dresses without style or charm, Tho men were gross, heavy-limbed and ple- thoric, |The music was appalling. It was produced out of a plano, a cello, and a violin driven by three Japane who cared nothing for time or tune. Each danee, evidently, was timed to last ten minutes, At the end of the ten minutes the music stopped with- out finishing the phrase or even the bar; and the movement of the danc- ers was jerked into stability. Reggie entered the room with Yae Smith, His manner was unusually excited ‘and elate A ‘Hello, Geoffrey, enjoying your- “No,"' said Geoffrey, ‘‘my wife has got a headache; and that music ts simply awful." “Come and have a drink,’ pro- posed Reggie. He took them aside into the bar and ordered champagne. “This is to drink our own healths," he announced, ‘‘and many years of happiness to all of us. It {ts also, Geoffrey, to drive away your English Spleen, and to make you into an agresable grass-widower into whose hands I may commend this young Indy, because you can dance and I cannot, My evening 1s complete. This fa my Nuno Dimittia.”” He led them back to the ballroom, Then, with a low bow and a flourish of an imagiaary cockea-nat, he dis- @ppeared, Geoffrey and Yao danced togeth & Cy they danced again. but she danced well; was used to a small partner. For Yae it was sheer delight to feel the size and strength of this giant man bending over her like a sheltering tree; and then to be lifted almost In his arms and to float on tiptoe over the floor with the delightful airiness of dreams. What strange orgies our dances are! To the critical mind what a strange contradiction to our sheep- ish passion-hiding conventions! <A survival of the corrobborree, of tho immolation of the tribal virgins, a ritual handed down from the darkest antiquity Hke the cult of the Christ- mas Tree and the Easter Egg; only their significance is lost, while that of the dance is transparently evident. Yao was tiny, and Geoffrey Maidens as chaste as Artemis, wives as loyal as Tucretia pass into the arms of men who are scarcely known to them, The Japanese consider, not un reasonably, that our dancing is disgusting A nice girl no doubt, and a nice man too, thinks of a dance as grace- ful exercise or as a game like tennis or hockey. But Yae was not a nice girl; and when the music stopped with {ts hideous abruptness, it awoke her from a kind of trance in which she had been lost to all sensations except the grip of Geoffrey's hand and arm, the stooping of his shadow above her, and the tingling of her own desire. Geoffrey left his partner at the end of t etr second dance. He went up- stairs to see his wife. He found her sleeping peacefully; so he returned to the ballroom again. He looked in at the bar, and drank another glass of champagne. He was teginning to en- joy himself. He could not find Yae, so he danced with the gipsy girl, who had a stride like a kangaroo. Then Yue reap- peared, They had two more dances together, and another glass of cham- pagne. The night was fine. There was bright moonlight. Goeffrey re- marked that It was jolly hot for dancing. Yae suggested a stroll elong the seashore; and int a few minutes they were standing together on the beach. “Oh! Look at the bonfires,”* Yae. A few hundred yards down the sea- front, where the black shadows of the native houses overhung the beach, the Hghted windows gleamed softly Uke flakes of mica, ‘The fishermen were burning seaweed and jetsam for ashes which would be used as fertil- {zer. Tongues of fire were flickering skywards. It was a blue night. The sky was deep blue, and the sea an oly greenish blue. Blue flames of salt danced and vanished over the blazinx heaps, The savage figures squatting round the fires were dressed in tunics of dark blue cloth. Their legs were bare. Their healthy faces lit up by the blaze were the color of ripe apri- cots, Their attitudes and movements were those of apes. The elder men were chattering together; the younger ones were gazing into the fire with an expression of healthy stupor. A bout was coming in from the sea, A ruby light hung at the prow. It was rowed by four men standing and yulohing, two in the stern and two at the bow. They were intoning a rhythmic chant to which their bodies moved. Thr boat was slim and pointed; and the rowers looked like Vikings, The shadows cast by the moonlight were inky black, the shadows of the beaked ships, the shadows of the sav- age huts, of the ape-like men, of the huge round fish baskets like immense amphorae. Far out from land, where the wide floating nets were spread, lights were scattered like constellations. The foreland was clearly visible, with the high woods which clothed {ts summit. But the farther end of the beach faded into an uneven string of lights, soft and spectral as will-o'-the-wisps. ‘Warmth rose from the sleeping earth; and a breeze blew in from the sea, making a strange metallic rustling, which to Japanese ears is the sweet- est natural music, in the gaunt slop- ing pine trees, whose height in the semi-darkness was exaggereted to monstrous and threatening propor- tions. Geoffrey felt a little hand tn his, warm and moist. i “Shall we go and see Dai-Butsu? said Yae. Geoffrey had no idea who Dat- Butsu might be, but he gladly agreed, She fluttered on beside him with her long kimono sleeves like a big moth. Geoffrey's head was full of wine and waltz tunes. ‘They dived into a narrow street with dwellings on each side. Some of the houses were shuttered and silent. Others were open to the street with ‘a completeness of detail denied by our stingy window casements—women sit- ting up late over thelr needlework, men talking round the firebox, shop- keepers adding up thelr accounts, fishermen mending their tackle. The street led inland towards ad- rupt hills, which looked like a wall of darkness, It was lit by the round street lamps, the luminous globules with Chinese letters on them which had pleased Geoffrey first at Naga- saki, The road entered a gorge be- tween two precipices, the kind of cleft into which the children of Ham- lin had followed the Pied Piper, “[ would not ike to come here alone," sald Yas, clinging tighter. “tt looks peaceful enough," sald Geoffrey. “Thore is cried little temple just to the Then they sat out a dance; and thy left, where « nun was murdered by @ priest only last year. He chopped her with a kitchen knife."* “What did he do it for? asked Geoffrey. “He loved her, and she would not listen to him; so he killed her, 1 think I would feel like that it I were @ man.” They passed under an enormous gateway, like a huge barn door with no barn behind {t. Two threatening gods stood sentinel on either hand. ‘Under the influence of the moonlight the carved figures seemed to move, Yae led her big companion along a broad-flagged path between a pol- larded avenue. Geoffrey still did not know what they had come so far to see. Nor did le care, Everything was s0 dreamy and 80 sweet, The path turned; and suddenty, straight in frout of them, they saw the God—the Great Buddha—the im- mense bronze statue which has sur- Vived from t days of Kamakura's elgnty bowed head and the oud shoulders were outlined against the blue and starry sky; against the Shadow of the woods the body, almost Invisible, could be dimly divned, The moonlight fell on the calm smile and on the hands palm upward in the lap, with finger-tips and thumb-tlps touching in the attitude of mediation, ‘That ineffably peace- ful, smiling face seemed to look down from the very height of heaven upon Geoffrey Barrington and Yae Smith, The presence of the god filled the ve patient and powerful, the cre« ator of the universe and the main- tainer of life. Geoffrey had never seen anything so impressive. He stooped down toward his little companion, listening for a re- sponse to his own emotion. It cama Before he could realize what was hap- pening he felt the soft kimono sleeves like wings round his neck, and the girl's burning mouth pressing his lips. “Oh, Geoffrey whispered. He sat down on a low table in front + of a shuttered refreshment bar, with Yae on his knee, his strong arm round her, even as she had dreamed. The Buddha of Infinite Understanding smiled down upon them. Geoffrey was too little of a prig to scold the girl, and too much of a man not to be touched and flattered by the sincerity of her embrace, He was too much of an Englishman to ascribe {t to to its real passionate motive and to profit by the opportunity. Instead, he told himself that she was only a child excited by the beauty, and the romance of the night, even as he was. He did not begin to realize that he or she was making love. So he took her on is knee and stroked her hand. “Isn't it fine?’ he said, looking up at the god. She started at the sotnd of his volce and put her arms around his neck again. “Oh, Geoffrey “how strong you ar He stood up laug in his arms. “If it wasn't for your big obl,” he said, “you would welgh nothing at all. Now hold tight, for Iam going to carry you home." He started down the avenue with a swinging stride. Yae could watch almost within range of her lps the powerful profile of his big face, @ soldier's face trained to command strong men and to be gentle to women and child There was w she murmured, ing, with the gir§ delicious fragrance about him, the dry heathery smell of clean men. He did not look down ut her, He was staring Into the black shadows ahead, his mind still full of that sudden vision of Buddha Amitabha, He was scarcely thinking of the half-caste girl who clung tightly to his neck. Yae had no interest to the Dal+ Butsu except us a grand background for love making, good excuse for hand squeezings aud ecstatic move+ ments, She had tried it once before with her schoolmaster lover. It never occurred to her that Geoffrey was in any way different from her other admirers, She thought that she herself was the sole cause of his emotion and that lis fixed expression as he strode in the darkness was an indication of his passion and a com~ pliment to her charms, She was too tactful to say anything, or to try to but she felt dis- force the situation; appointed when at the approach of lighted houses he put her down with- out further caresses. In silence they, returned to the hotel, where a few tired couples were still_retolving to @ spasmodic music. offrey was Ww now, and the enchantment of the wine had passed ay. "Good-night, Yae," he sald, holding the lapels of his would have dearly loved But he stood like n of bending would e dden fruit. "she purred She wa coat, and sh to kiss hir @ tower without down her; 4 Good-night, ¢ - il never forget to-night." It was lovely,” said*the English n, thinking of the Great Buddha. offrey retired tu his room, where t He the frst sur- s had startled Only prise of the his loyalty, With the ostrich-like obtuseness, wii cur continental neighbors call « hypocrisy, he burled his head in his principles, As Avako's husband, he could not flirt woman, As Reggie's | not flirt with Reggie's an honorable man, he with another triend, he would sweetheart. As would not trifle with the affections of a gir! who meant nothing whatever tohim, Therefore the incident of the Great Buddha had no significance, Therefore he could lic down and sleep with a ight heart (Continued To-morrow.) | jy ener cence i ESS PY