uses don't
display their women. One can only see a row of photographs. No doubt
they are very flattering to their originals."

Asako was staring at the buildings now, at the high square prison
houses, and at the low native roofs. These had each its little
platform, its _monohoshi_, where much white washing was drying in the
sun.

At the farther end of one street a large stucco building, with a
Grecian portico, stood athwart the thoroughfare.

"What is that?" said Asako; "it looks like a church."

"That is the hospital," answered Reggie.

"But why is there a hospital here?" she asked again.

Yae Smith smiled ever so little at her new friend's ignorance of the
wages of sin. But nobody answered the question.

* * * * *

There was a movement in the crowd, a pushing back from some unseen
locality, like the jolting of railway trucks. At the same time there
was a craning of necks and a murmur of interest.

In the street opposite, the crowd was opening down the centre. The
police, who had sprung up everywhere like the crop of the dragons'
teeth, were dividing the people. And then, down the path so formed,
came the strangest procession which Geoffrey Barrington had ever seen
on or off the stage.

High above the heads of the crowd appeared what seemed to be a
life-size automaton, a moving waxwork magnificently garbed in white
brocade with red and gold embroidery of phenixes, and a huge red sash
tied in a bow in front. The hem of the skirt, turned up with red and
thickly wadded, revealed a series of these garments fitting beneath
each other, like the leaves of an artichoke. Under a monumental
edifice of hair, bristling like a hedgehog with amber-coloured pins
and with silver spangles and rosettes, a blank, impassive little face
was staring straight in front of it, utterly expressionless, utterly
unnatural, hidden beneath the glaze of enamel--the china face of a
doll.

It parted the grey multitude like a pillar of light. It tottered
forward slowly, for it was lifted above the crowd on a pair of
black-lacquered clogs as high as stilts, dangerous and difficult to
manipulate. On each side were two little figures, similarly painted,
similarly bedizened, similarly expressionless, children of nine or
ten years only, the _komuro_, the little waiting-women. They served to
support the reigning beauty and at the same time to display her long
embroidered sleeves, outstretched on either side like w