shop windows ticketed and
priced."

Count Saito smiled again and said:

"I see that you are an idealist like so many Englishmen. But I am only
a practical statesman. The problem of vice is a problem of government.
No law can abolish it. It is for us statesmen to study how to restrain
it and its evil consequences. Three hundred years ago these women
used to walk about the streets as they do in London to-day. Tokugawa
Iyeyasu, the greatest of all Japanese statesmen, who gave peace to the
whole country, put in order this untidiness also. He had the Yoshiwara
built, and he put all the women there, where the police could watch
both them and the men who visited them. The English might learn from
us here, I think. But you are an unruly people. It is not only that
you object for ideal reasons to the imprisonment of these women; but
it is your men who would object very strongly to having the eye of the
policeman watching them when they paid their visits."

Geoffrey was silenced by the experience of his host. He was afraid,
as most Englishmen are, of arguing that the British determination to
ignore vice, however disastrous in practice, is a system infinitely
nobler in conception than the acquiescence which admits for the evil
its right to exist, and places it among the commonplaces of life.

"And how about the people who make money out of such a place?" asked
Geoffrey. "They must be contemptible specimens."

The face of the wise statesman became suddenly gentle.

"I really don't know much about them," he said. "If we do meet them
they do not boast about it."

CHAPTER XV

EURASIA

_Mono-sugo ya
Ara omoshiro no
Kaeri-bana._

Queer--
Yes, but attractive
Are the flowers which bloom out of season.

Although he felt a decreasing interest in the Japanese people,
Geoffrey was enjoying his stay in Tokyo. He was tired of traveling,
and was glad to settle down in the semblance of a home life.

He was very keen on his tennis. It was also a great pleasure to see
so much of Reggie Forsyth. Besides, he was conscious of the mission
assigned to him by Lady Cynthia Cairns to save his friend from the
dangerous connection with Yae Smith.

Reggie and he had been at Eton together. Geoffrey, four years the
senior, a member of "Pop," and an athlete of many colours, found
himself one day the object of an almost idolatrous worship on the part
of a skinny little being, discreditably clever at Latin verses, and
given