tes, Japan, or the open ports of China, lived there to earn
their bread and butter, not to dream about the Magic of the Orient.
For such as these the romance had faded. The pages of their busy lives
were written within a mourning border of discontent, of longing for
that home land, to which on the occasion of their rare holidays they
returned so readily, and which seemed to have no particular place or
use for them when they did return. They were members of the British
Dispersion; but their Zion was of more comfort to them as a sweet
memory than as an actual home.

"Yes," they would say about the land of their exile, "it is very
picturesque."

But their faces, lined or pale, their bitterness and their reticence,
told of years of strain, laboriously money-earning, in lands where
relaxations are few and forced, where climatic conditions are adverse,
where fevers lurk, and where the white minority are posted like
soldiers in a lonely fort, ever suspicious, ever on the watch.

* * * * *

The most faithful of Asako's bodyguard was a countryman of her own,
Viscount Kamimura, the son of a celebrated Japanese statesman and
diplomat, who, after completing his course at Cambridge, was returning
to his own country for the first time after many years.

He was a shy gentle youth, very quiet and refined, a little
effeminate, even, in his exaggerated gracefulness and in his
meticulous care for his clothes and his person. He avoided all company
except that of the Barringtons, probably because a similarity in
circumstances formed a bond between him and his country-woman.

He had a high, intellectual forehead, the beautiful deep brown eyes of
Asako, curling, sarcastic lips, a nose almost aquiline but starting a
fraction of an inch too low between his eyes. He had read everything,
he remembered everything, and he had played lawn tennis for his
university.

He was returning to Japan to be married. When Geoffrey asked him who
his fiancee was, he replied that he did not know yet, but that his
relatives would tell him as soon as ever he arrived in Japan.

"Haven't you got any say in the matter?" asked the Englishman.

"Oh yes," he answered, "If I actually dislike her, I need not marry
her; but, of course, the choice is limited, so I must try not to be
too hard to please."

Geoffrey thought that it must be because of his extreme aristocracy
that so few maidens in Japan were worthy of his hand. But Asak