s his flesh-and-blood interpreter
if he is to get even as far as a misunderstanding. So in figuring to
himself the East, Reggie had at first made use of his memory of Asako,
with her European education built up over the inheritance of Japan.
Later he met Yae Smith, through the paper walls of whose Japanese
existence the instincts of her Scottish forefathers kept forcing their
unruly way.

Geoffrey could not define his thoughts so precisely; but something
unruly stirred in his consciousness, when he saw the ghost of his days
of courtship rise before him in the deep blue kimono. His wife had
certainly made a great abdication when she abandoned her native dress
for plain blue serges. Of course he could not have Asako looking like
a doll; but still--had he fallen in love with a few yards of silk?

Yae Smith seemed most anxious to please in spite of the affectation of
her poses, which perhaps were necessary to her, lest, looking so much
like a plaything, she might be greeted as such. She always wanted to
be liked by people. This was her leading characteristic. It was at the
root of her frailties--a soil overfertilized from which weeds spring
apace.

She was voluble in a gentle cat-like way, praising the rings on
Asako's fingers, and the cut and material of her dress. But her eyes
were forever glancing towards Geoffrey. He was so very tall and broad,
standing in the framework of the folding doors beside the slim figure
of Reggie, more girlish than ever in the skirts of his kimono.

Captain Barrington, the son of a lord! How fine he must look in
uniform, in that cavalry uniform, with the silver cuirass and the
plumed helmet like the English soldiers in her father's books at home!

"Your husband is very big," she said to Asako.

"Yes, he is," said Asako; "much too big for Japan."

"Oh, I should like that," said the little Eurasian, "it must be nice."

There was a warmth, a sincerity in the tone which made Asako stare
at her companion. But the childish face was innocent and smiling.
The languid curve of the smile and the opalescence of the green eyes
betrayed none of their secrets to Asako's inexperience.

Reggie sat down at the piano, and, still watching the two women, he
began to play.

"This is the Yae Sonata," he explained to Geoffrey.

It began with some bars from an old Scottish song:

"Had we never loved so sadly,
Had we never loved so madly,
Never loved and never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-h