bathing again; and next week there is a dance."

"Well, we might come down for that if her Ladyship agrees. How is
Lamia?"

"Don't call her that, please. She has got a soul after all. But it
is rather a disobedient one. It runs away like a little dog, and goes
rabbit-hunting for days on end. She is in great form. We motor in the
moonlight."

"Then I think it is quite time I did come," said Geoffrey.

So the Harringtons arrived in their sumptuous car on the afternoon
before the dance of which Reggie Forsyth had spoken.

On the beach they found him in a blue bathing-costume sitting under an
enormous paper umbrella with Miss Smith and the gipsy half-caste girl.
Yae wore a cotton kimono of blue and white, and she looked like a
figurine from a Nanking vase.

"Geoffrey," said the young diplomat, "come into the sea at once. You
look thoroughly dirty. Do you like sea-bathing, Mrs. Harrington?"

"I have only paddled," said Asako, "when I was a little girl."

Geoffrey could not resist the temptation of the blue water and the
lazy curling waves. In a few minutes the two men were walking down to
the sea's edge, Geoffrey laughing at Reggie's chatter. His arms were
akimbo, with hands on the hips, hips which looked like the boles of a
mighty oak-tree. He touched the ground with the elasticity of Mercury;
he pushed through the air with the shoulders of Hercules. The line of
his back was pliant as a steel blade. In his hair the sun's reflection
shone like wires of gold. The Gods were come down in the semblance of
men.

Yae did not repress a sharp intake of her breath; and she squeezed the
hand of the gipsy girl as if pain had gripped her.

"How big your husband is!" she said to Asako. "What a splendid man!"

Asako thought of her husband as "dear old Geoffrey." She never
criticized his points; nor did she think that Yae's admiration was in
very good taste. However, she accepted it as a clumsy compliment from
an uneducated girl who knew no better. The gipsy companion watched
with a peculiar smile. She understood the range of Yae's admiration.

"Isn't it a pity they have to wear bathing dress?" Miss Smith went on.
"It's so ugly. Look at the Japanese."

Farther along the beach some Japanese men were bathing. They threw
their clothes down on the sand and ran into the water with nothing on
their bodies except a strip of white cotton knotted round the loins.
They dashed into the sea with their arms lifted above their head,
shou