walls of the
city swallowed the bobbing lantern. Then she went into the office.

"What is a sing-song girl?" she asked.

The manager twisted his moustache. "The same as a Japanese geisha
girl."

"And what is a geisha girl?"

Not to have heard of the geisha! It was as if she had asked: "What
is Paris?" What manner of tourist was this who had heard neither of
the geisha of Japan nor of the sing-song girl of China? Before he
could marshal the necessary phrases to explain, Ruth herself
indicated her thought.

"A bad girl?" She put the question as she would have put any
question--level-eyed and level-toned.

After a series of mental gymnastics--occupying the space of a few
seconds--it came to him with a shock that here was a new specimen
of the species. At the same time he comprehended that she was as
pure and lovely as the white orchid of Borneo and that she did not
carry that ridiculous shield called false modesty. He could talk to
her as frankly as he could to a man, that she would not take
offence at anything so long as it was in the form of explanation.
On the other hand, there was a subconscious impression that she
would be able to read instantly anything unclean in a man's eye.
All her questions would have as a background the idea of future
defence.

"The geisha and the sing-song girl are professional entertainers.
They are not bad girls, but the average tourist has that
misconception of them. If some of them are bad in the sense you
mean, it is because there are bad folks in all walks of life. They
sell only their talents, not their bodies; they are not girls of
the street."

The phrase was new, but Ruth nodded understandingly.

"Still," went on the manager, "they are slaves in a sense; they are
bought and sold until their original indebtedness is paid. A father
is in debt, we'll say. He sells his daughter to a geisha or a
sing-song master, and the girl is rented out until the debt is paid.
Then the work is optional; they go on their own. There are sing-song
girls in Hong-Kong and Shanghai who are famous and wealthy.
Sometimes they marry well. If they become bad it is through
inclination, not necessity."

Again Ruth nodded.

"To go a little further. Morality is a point of view. It is an
Occidental point of view. The Oriental has no equivalent. What you
would look upon as immorality is here merely an established custom,
three thousand years older than Christianity, accepted with no more
ado than tha