k.

"How interesting," she said, "it will be for Geoffrey Harrington and
his wife to visit Japan and find out all about it."

The Ambassador's manner changed.

"No, I do not think," he said, "I do not think that is a good thing at
all. They must not do that. You must not let them."

"But why not?"

"I say to all Japanese men and women who live a long time in foreign
countries or who marry foreign people, 'Do not go back to Japan,'
Japan is like a little pot and the foreign world is like a big garden.
If you plant a tree from the pot into the garden and let it grow, you
cannot put it back into the pot again."

"But, in this case, that is not the only reason," objected Lady
Everington.

"No, there are many other reasons too," the Ambassador admitted; and
he rose from his sofa, indicating that the interview was at an end.

* * * * *

The bridal pair left in a motor-car for Folkestone tinder a hailstorm
of rice, and with the propitious white slipper dangling from the
number-plate behind.

When all her guests were gone, Lady Everington fled to her boudoir and
collapsed in a little heap of sobbing finery on the broad divan. She
was overtired, no doubt; but the sense of her mistake lay heavy upon
her, and the feeling that she had sacrificed to it her best friend,
the most humanly valuable of all the people who resorted to her house.
An evil cloud of mystery hung over the young marriage, one of those
sinister unfamiliar forces which travellers bring home from the East,
the curse of a god or a secret poison or a hideous disease.

It would be so natural for those two to want to visit Japan and to
know their second home. Yet both Sir Ralph Cairns and Count Saito, the
only two men that day who knew anything about the real conditions,
had insisted that such a visit would be fatal. And who were these
Fujinamis whom Count Saito knew, but did not know? Why had she, who
was so socially careful, taken so much for granted just because Asako
was a Japanese?

CHAPTER II

HONEYMOON

_Asa no kami
Ware wa kezuraji
Utsukushiki
Kimi ga ta-makura
Fureteshi mono wo._

(My) morning sleep hair
I will not comb;
For it has been in contact with
The pillowing hand of
My beautiful Lord!

The Barringtons left England for a prolonged honeymoon, for Geoffrey
was now free to realise his favourite project of travelling abroad.
So they became numbered among that shoal of Eng