oreign people kiss too much," said cousin Sadako, "it is a bad
thing. If I had a husband, I would always fear he kiss somebody else."

"That is why I am so happy with Geoffrey," said Asako, "I know he
would never love any one but me."

"It is not safe to be so sure," said her cousin darkly, "a woman is
made for one man, but a man is made for many women."

Asako, arrayed in a Japanese kimono, and to all appearance as Japanese
as her cousin, was sitting in the Fujinami tea-parlour. She had not
understood much of the lesson in tea-ceremony at which she had just
assisted. But the exceeding propriety and dignity of the teacher, the
daughter of great people fallen upon evil days, had impressed her. She
longed to acquire that tranquillity of deportment, that slow graceful
poise of hand and arm, that low measured speech. When the teacher
had gone, she began to mimic her gestures with all the seriousness of
appreciative imitation.

Sadako laughed. She supposed that her cousin was fooling. Asako
thought that she was amused by her clumsiness.

"I shall never be able to do it," she sighed.

"But of course you will. I laugh because you are so like Kikuye San."

Kikuye San was their teacher.

"If only I could practise by myself!" said Asako, "but at the hotel it
would be impossible."

Then they both laughed together at the incongruity of rehearsing those
dainty rites of old Japan in the over-furnished sitting-room at
the Imperial Hotel, with Geoffrey sitting back in his arm-chair and
puffing at his cigar.

"If only I had a little house like this," said Asako.

"Why don't you hire one?" suggested her cousin.

Why not? The idea was an inspiration. So Asako thought; and she
broached the matter to Geoffrey that very evening.

"Wouldn't it be sweet to have a ducky little Japanese house all our
very own?" she urged.

"Oh yes," her husband agreed, wearily, "that would be great sport."

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was delighted at the success of his daughter's
diplomacy. He saw that this plan for a Japanese house meant a further
separation of husband and wife, a further step towards recovery of
his errant child. For he was beginning to regard Asako with parental
sentiment, and to pity her condition as the wife of this coarse
stranger.

Miss Sadako was under no such altruistic delusions. She envied her
cousin. She envied her money, her freedom, and her frank happiness.
She had often pondered about the ways of Japanese husbands an