Her Excellency was pondering what had better be done for Geoffrey.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"He stopped the night at Nikko. He is probably in the train for Tokyo
by now."

If she were a hero, a real theatre hero, as Geoffrey had been
apparently, she would go straight off to Tokyo also; and perhaps she
would be able to prevent a catastrophe. Or perhaps she would not.
Perhaps she would only make things worse. On the whole, she had better
stop in Chuzenji and look after her own husband.

"Reggie," she said, "you've had a lucky escape. How did you know that
I had any hand in this? You're more of a girl than a man. A rotten
marriage would have broken you. Geoffrey Barrington is made of
stronger stuff. He is in for a bad time. But he will learn a lot which
you know already; and he will survive."

CHAPTER XX

THE KIMONO

_Na we to wa wo
Hito zo saku naru.
Ide, wagimi!
Hito no naka-goto
Kiki-kosu na yume!_

It is other people who have separated
You and me.
Come, my Lord!
Do not dream of listening
To the between-words of people!

After a ghastly night of sleeplessness at Nikko, Geoffrey Barrington
reached Tokyo in time for lunch. His thoughts were confused and
discordant.

"I feel as if I had been drunk for a week," he kept on saying to
himself. Indeed, he felt a fume of unreality over all his actions.

One thing was certain: financially, he was a ruined man. The thousands
a year which yesterday morning had been practically his, the ease and
comfort which had seemed so secure, were lost more hopelessly than if
his bank had failed. Even the cash in his pocket he touched with the
greatest disgust, as if those identical bills and coins had been paid
across the brothel counter as the price for a man's dirty pleasures
and a girl's shame and disease. He imagined that the Nikko
hotel-keeper looked at his notes suspiciously as though they were
endorsed with the seal of the Yoshiwara.

Geoffrey was ruined. He was henceforth dependent on what his brain
could earn and on what his father would allow him, five hundred pounds
a year at the outside. If he had been alone in the world it would not
have mattered much; but Asako, poor little Asako, the innocent cause
of this disaster, she was ruined too. She who loved her riches, her
jewellery, her pretty things, she would have to sell them all. She
would have to follow him into poverty, she, who had no experience of
its meaning. This was his p