dam!"

Patterson introduced them by name as O Hana San (Miss Flower), O Yuki
San (Miss Snow), O En San (Miss Affinity), O Toshi San (Miss Year), O
Taka San (Miss Tall) and O Koma San (Miss Pony).

One of them, Miss Pony, put her arm around Geoffrey's neck--the little
fingers felt like the touch of insects--and said,--

"My darling, you love me?"

The big Englishman disengaged himself gently. It is Bad Form to be
rough to women, even to Japanese courtesans. He began to be sorry that
he had come.

"I have brought two very dear friends of mine," said Patterson to all
the world, "for pleasure artistic rather than carnal; though perhaps I
can safely prophesy that the pleasure of the senses is the end of
all true art. We have come to see the national dance of Japan, the
Nagasaki reel, the famous _Chonkina_. I myself am familiar with the
dance. On two or three occasions I have performed with credit in these
very halls. But these two gentlemen have come all the way from England
on purpose to see the dance. I therefore request that you will dance
it to-night with care and attention, with force of imagination, with
a sense of pleasurable anticipation, and with humble respect to the
naked truth."

He spoke with the precise eloquence of intoxication, and as he flopped
to the ground again Wigram clapped him on the shoulder with a "Bravo,
old man!"

Geoffrey felt very silent and rather sick.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

The little women made a show of modesty, hiding their faces behind
their long kimono sleeves.

A servant girl pushed open the walls which communicated with the
next room, an exact replica of the one in which they were sitting. An
elderly woman in a sea-grey kimono was squatting there silent, rigid
and dignified. For a moment Geoffrey thought that a mistake had been
made, that this was another guest disturbed in quiet reflection and
about to be justly indignant.

But no, this Roman matron held in her lap the white disc of a
_samisen_, the native banjo, upon which she strummed with a flat white
bone. She was the evening's orchestra, an old _geisha_.

The six little butterflies lined up in front of her and began to
dance, not our Western dance of free limbs, but an Oriental dance
from the hips with posturings of hands and feet. They sang a harsh
faltering song without any apparent relation to the accompaniment
played by that austere dame.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

The six little figures swayed to and fro