f it were anybody
else I should say you were in love with this girl."

"I am still the same, Geoffrey; always in love--and never."

"But what about the other people here?" Barrington asked.

"There are none, none who count. I am not impressionable. I am just
short-sighted. I have to focus my weak vision on one person and
neglect the rest."

* * * * *

A rickshaw was waiting to take Geoffrey back to the hotel. Under the
saffron light of an uncanny sunset, which barred the western heavens
with three broad streaks of orange and inky-blue like a gypsy girl's
kerchief, the odd little vehicle rolled down the hill of Miyakezaka
which overhangs the moat of the Imperial Palace.

The latent soul of Tokyo, the mystery of Japan, lies within the
confines of that moat, which is the only great majestic thing in an
untidy rambling village of more than two million living beings.

The Palace of the Mikado--a title by the way which is never used among
Japanese--is hidden from sight. That is the first remarkable thing
about it. The gesture of Versailles, the challenge of "_l'etat c'est
moi_," the majestic vulgarity which the millionaire of the moment can
mimic with a vulgarity less majestic, are here entirely absent; and
one cannot mimic the invisible.

Hardly, on bare winter days, when the sheltering groves are stripped,
and the saddened heart is in need of reassurance, appears a green
lustre of copper roofs.

The _Goshoe_ at Tokyo is not a sovereign's palace; it is the abode of a
God.

The surrounding woods and gardens occupy a space larger than Hyde
Park in the very centre of the city. One well-groomed road crosses
an extreme corner of this estate. Elsewhere only privileged feet may
tread. This is a vast encumbrance in a modern commercial metropolis,
but a striking tribute to the unseen.

The most noticeable feature of the Palace is its moats. These lie in
three or four concentric circles, the defences of ancient Yedo, whose
outer lines have now been filled up by modern progress and an electric
railway. They are broad sheets of water as wide as the Thames at
Oxford, where ducks are floating and fishing. Beyond is a _glacis_
of vivid grass, a hundred feet high at some points, topped by vast
iron-grey walls of cyclopean boulder-work, with the sudden angles of
a Vauban fortress. Above these walls the weird pine-trees of Japan
extend their lean tormented boughs. Within is the Emperor's domain.