nge of raiment:

"But Tanaka was there. You don't mind him seeing you apparently."

Asako had burst out laughing.

"Oh, he isn't a man. He isn't real at all. He says that I am like a
flower, and that I am very beautiful in '_deshabeel_.'"

"That sounds real enough," grunted Geoffrey, "and very like a man."

Perhaps, innocent as she was, Asako enjoyed playing off Tanaka against
her husband, just as it certainly amused her to watch the jealousy
between Titine and the Japanese. It gave her a pleasant sense of power
to see her big husband look so indignant.

"How old do you think Tanaka is?" he asked her one day.

"Oh, about eighteen or nineteen," she answered. She was not yet used
to the deceptiveness of Japanese appearances.

"He does not look more sometimes," said her husband; "but he has the
ways and the experience of a very old hand. I wouldn't mind betting
you that he is thirty."

"All right," said Asako, "give me the jade Buddha if you are wrong."

"And what will you give me if I am right?" said Geoffrey.

"Kisses," replied his wife.

Geoffrey went out to look for Tanaka. In a quarter of an hour he came
back, triumphant.

"My kisses, sweetheart," he demanded.

"Wait," said Asako; "how old is he?"

"I went out of the front door and there was Master Tanaka, telling the
rickshaw-men the latest gossip about us. I said to him, 'Tanaka,
are you married?' 'Yes, Lordship,' he answered, 'I am widower.' 'Any
children?' I asked again. 'I have two progenies,' he said; 'they are
soldiers of His Majesty the Emperor.' 'Why, how old are you?' I asked.
'Forty-three years,' he answered. 'You are very well preserved for a
man of your age,' I said, and I have come back for my kisses."

After this monstrous deception Geoffrey had declared that he would
dismiss Tanaka.

"A man who goes about like that," he said, "is a living lie."

* * * * *

Two days later, early in the morning, they left Kyoto by the great
metal high road of Japan, which has replaced the famous way known as
the _Tokaido_, sacred in history, legend and art. Every stone has its
message for Japanese eyes, every tree its association with poetry or
romance. Even among Western connoisseurs of Japanese wood engraving,
its fifty-two resting places are as familiar as the Stations of the
Cross. Such is the _Tokaido_, the road between the two capitals of
Kyoto and Tokyo, still haunted by the ghosts of the Emperor's ox-drawn
wa