edecessor, Aubrey Laking, which might
induce him to buy and keep a woman for whom he felt no affection. The
love which can exchange no thoughts in speech was altogether too
crude for him. It was his emotions, rather than his senses, which were
always craving for amorous excitement. His frail body claimed merely
its right to follow their lead, as a little boat follows the strong
wind which fills its sails. But ever since he had loved Geoffrey
Barrington at Eton it was a necessity for his nature to love some one;
and as the haze of his young conceptions cleared, that some one became
necessarily a woman.

He soon recognized the wisdom of the Foreign Office in choosing Japan.
It was a starvation diet which had been prescribed for him. So he
settled down to his memories and to _L'attente d'hiver_, thinking that
it would be two long years or more before his Spring blossomed again.

* * * * *

Then he heard the story of the duel fought for Yae Smith by two young
English officers, both of them her lovers, so people said, and the
vaguer tale of a fiance's suicide. Some weeks later, he met her for
the first time at a dance. She was the only woman present in Japanese
dress, and Reggie thought at once of Asako Barrington. How wise of
these small women to wear the kimono which drapes so gracefully their
stumpy figures. He danced with her, his right hand lodged somewhere in
the folds of the huge bow with the embroidered peacock, which covered
her back. Under this stiff brocade he could feel no sensation of a
living body. She seemed to have no bones in her, and she was as
light as a feather. It was then that he imagined her as Lilith, the
snake-girl. She danced with ease, so much better than he, that at the
end of a series of cannons she suggested that they might sit out the
dance. She guided him into the garden, and they took possession of a
rustic seat. In the ballroom she had seemed timid, and had spoken in
undertones only; but in this shadowy _tete-a-tete_ beneath the stars,
she began to talk frankly about her own life.

She told him about her one visit to England with her father; how she
had loved the country, and how dull it was for her here in Japan. She
asked him about his music. She would so like to hear him play. There
was an old piano at her home. She did not think he would like it very
much--indeed, Reggie was already shuddering in anticipation--or else?
Would she come to tea with him at