ve fingers would no longer clutch at the long sleeves
of, crinkled silk, or try to probe the secret of the huge butterfly
bow on her back. She could step out fearlessly now like English women.
She could give up the mincing walk and the timid manner which she felt
was somehow inseparable from her native dress.

When she told her protectress that Geoffrey had consented to its
abandonment, Lady Everington had heaved a sigh.

"Poor Kimono!" she said, "it has served you well. But I suppose a
soldier is glad to put his uniform away when the fighting is over.
Only, never forget the mysterious power of the uniform over the other
sex."

Another day when her Ladyship had been in a bad mood, she had
snapped,--

"Put those things away, child, and keep to your kimono. It is your
natural plumage. In those borrowed plumes you look undistinguished and
underfed."

* * * * *

The Japanese Ambassador to the Court of St. James proposed the health
of the bride and bridegroom. Count Saito was a small, wise man, whom
long sojourn in European countries had to some extent de-orientalised.
His hair was grizzled, his face was seamed, and he had a peering way
of gazing through his gold-rimmed spectacles with head thrust forward
like a man half blind, which he certainly was not.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is a great pleasure for me to
be present on this occasion, for I think this wedding is a personal
compliment to myself and to my work in this splendid country. Mr. and
Mrs. Geoffrey Barrington are the living symbols of the Anglo-Japanese
Alliance; and I hope they will always remember the responsibility
resting on their shoulders. The bride and bridegroom of to-day must
feel that the relations of Great Britain and Japan depend upon the
perfect harmony of their married life. Ladies and gentlemen, let us
drink long life and happiness to Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Barrington, to
the Union Jack and to the Rising Sun!"

The toast, was drunk and three cheers were given, with an extra cheer
for Mrs. Geoffrey. The husband, who was no hand at speechmaking,
replied--and his good-natured voice was quite thick with emotion--that
it was awfully good of them all to give his wife and himself such a
ripping send-off, and awfully good of Sir George and Lady Everington
especially, and awfully good of Count Saito; and that he was the
happiest man in the world and the luckiest, and that his wife had told
him to tell them