lls
and rolls of plain silk, red and white. This was an offering from
the Japanese community in London, the conventional wedding present of
every Japanese home from the richest to the poorest, varying only
in size and splendour. On another small table lay a bundle of brown
objects like prehistoric axe heads, bound round with red and white
string, and vaguely odorous of bloater-paste. These were dried flesh
of the fish called _katsuobushi_ by the Japanese, whose absence also
would have brought misfortune to the newly married. Behind them, on
a little tray, stood a miniature landscape representing an aged
pine-tree by the sea-shore and a little cottage with a couple of old,
old people standing at its door, two exquisite little dolls dressed
in rough, poor kimonos, brown and white. The old man holds a rake,
and the old woman holds a broom. They have very kindly faces and white
silken hair. Any Japanese would recognise them at once as the Old
People of Takasago, the personification of the Perfect Marriage.
They are staring with wonder and alarm at the Brandan sapphires,
a monumental _parure_ designed for the massive state of some
Early-Victorian Lady Brandan.

Asako Fujinami had spent days rejoicing over the arrival of her
presents, little interested in the identity of the givers but
fascinated by the things themselves. She had taken hours to arrange
them in harmonious groups. Then a new gift would arrive which would
upset the balance, and she would have to begin all over again.

Besides this treasury in the dining-room, there were all her
clothes, packed now for the honeymoon, a whole wardrobe of fairy-like
disguises, wonderful gowns of all colours and shapes and materials.
These, it is true, she had bought herself. She had always been
surrounded by money; but it was only since she had lived with Lady
Everington that she had begun to learn something about the thousand
different ways of spending it, and all the lovely things for which it
can be exchanged. So all her new things, whatever their source, seemed
to her like presents, like unexpected enrichments. She had basked
among her new acquisitions, silent as was her wont when she was happy,
sunning herself in the warmth of her prosperity. Best of all, she
never need wear kimonos again in public. Her fiance had acceded to
this, her most immediate wish. She could dress now like the girls
around her. She would no longer be stared at like a curio in a shop
window. Inquisiti