njoyment.'

'A Japanese god?' I asked.

'Yes, nothing artistic is quite right now unless it has a savour of
blue mould or Japan. Wonderful people, the Japanese, to have
discovered the Jolly Hotei. And here is Hotei's wife, the
goddess-queen Yoka herself--the real masquerader behind that mystic
veil which has so enveloped and bemuddled the mind of poor
Wilderspin. She is to figure in the first number of _The
Caricaturist_.'

He pointed to an object I had only partially observed: a broad-faced
burly woman, of about forty-five years of age, in an eccentric dress
of Japanese silks, standing on the model-throne between two lay
figures. 'Good heavens!' I exclaimed, 'why, she's alive.'

'An' kickin', sir,' said a voice that was at once strident and
unctuous. Owing to the almond shape of her sparkling black eyes and
the flatness of her nose, the bridge of which had been broken (most
likely in childhood), she looked absurdly like a Japanese woman, save
that upon her quaintly-cut mouth, curving slightly upwards horse-shoe
fashion, there was that twitter of humorous alertness which is
perhaps rarely seen in perfection except among the lower orders,
Celtic or Saxon, of London. Her build was that of a Dutch
fisher-woman. The set of her head on her muscular neck showed her to
be a woman of immense strength. But still more was her great physical
power indicated by her hands, the fingers of which seemed to have a
grip like that of an eagle's claws.

I then perceived upon an easel a large drawing. 'I have not seen
Wilderspin's "Faith and Love,"' I said; 'but this, I see, must be a
caricature of it.'

In it the woman figured as Isis, grinning beneath a veil held over
her head by two fantastically-dressed figures--one having the face of
Darwin, the other the face of Wilderspin.

'Allow me,' said Cyril, 'to introduce you to the Goddess Yoka, the
true Isis or goddess of bohemianism and universal joke, who, when she
had the chance of I making a rational and common-sense universe,
preferred amusing herself with flamingoes, dromedaries, ring-taile
monkeys, and men.'

'Pardon me,' I said; 'I merely called to see you. Good afternoon.'

'Allow me,' said he, turning to the woman, 'to introduce to your
celestial majesty Mr. Henry Aylwin, a kinsman of mine, whose
possessions in Little Egypt are as brilliant (judging from the
colours of his royal waggon) as are his possessions in Philistia.'

The woman made me a curtsey of much gravity.