anese life is so very
uncomfortable, you know, even to the Japs themselves, when once they
have got used to living in Europe or America. They sleep on the floor,
their clothes are inconvenient, and their food is nasty, even in the
houses of the rich ones."

"Yes, it must be a peculiar country. What do you think is the greatest
shock for the average traveller who goes there?"

"Lady Georgie, you are asking me very searching questions to-day. I
don't think I will answer any more."

"Just this one," she pleaded.

He considered his boots again for a moment, and then, raising his face
to hers with that humorous challenging look which he assumes when on
the verge of some indiscretion, he replied,--

"The _Yoshiwara_."

"Yes," said her Ladyship, "I have heard of such a place. It is a kind
of Vanity Fair, isn't it, for all the _cocottes_ Of Tokyo?"

"It's more than that," Laking answered; "it is a market of
human flesh, with nothing to disguise the crude fact except the
picturesqueness of the place. It is a square enclosure as large as a
small town. In this enclosure are shops, and in the shop windows
women are displayed just like goods, or like animals in cages; for the
windows have wooden bars. Some of the girls sit there stolidly like
stuffed images, some of them come to the bars and try to catch hold of
the passers-by, just like monkeys, and joke with them and shout after
them. But I could not understand what they said--fortunately, perhaps.
The girls,--there must be several thousands--are all dressed up in
bright kimonos. It really is a very pretty sight, until one begins to
think. They have their price tickets hung up in the shop windows, one
shilling up to one pound. That is the greatest shock which Japan has
in store for the ordinary tourist."

Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had
become quite serious.

"After all," she said, "is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at
night?"

"It is not a question of better or worse," argued Laking. "Such a
purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished
belief. We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission
of guilt and an act of worship. To us, even to the readiest sinners
among us, woman is always something divine. The lowest assignation
of the streets has at least a disguise of romance. It symbolises
the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the
Japanese, woman must be merely ani