I can think of a thousand things right now I want to say to Jack and while storing them away for some future happy hour, I walked further into the deep shadows of twilight.

Instantly the spell of the East was over me.  Real life was not.  In the soft green silences of mystery and fancy, I found a seat by an ancient moss-covered tomb.  Dreamily I watched a great red dragon-fly frivol with the fairy blue wreaths of incense-smoke that hovered above the leaf shadows trembling on the sand.  The deep melody of a bell, sifted through a cloud of blossom, caught up my willing soul and floated out to sea and Jack far from this lovely land, where stalks unrestrained the ugly skeleton of easy divorce for men.  The subject always irritates me like prickly heat.

Nikko, July, 1911.

Summer in Japan is no joke, especially if you are waiting for letters.  I know perfectly well I can’t hear from you and Jack for an age, and yet I watch for the postman three times a day, as a hungry man waits for the dinner-bell.

The days in Yokohama were too much like a continuous Turkish bath, and I fled to Nikko, the ever moist and mossy.  Two things you can always expect in this village of “roaring, wind-swept mountains,”—­rain and courtesy.  One is as inevitable as the other, and both are served in quantities.

I am staying in a semi-foreign hotel which is tucked away in a pocket in the side of a mountain as comfy as a fat old lady in a big rocker who glories in dispensing hospitality with both hands.  Just let me put my head out of my room door and the hall fairly blossoms with little maids eager to serve.  A step toward the entrance brings to life a small army of attendants bending as they come like animated jack-knives on a live wire.  One struggles with the mystery of my overshoes, while the Master stands by and begs me to take care of my honorable spirit.  As it is the only spirit I possess I heed his advice and bring it back to the hotel to find the entire force standing at attention, ready to receive me.  I pass on to my room with a procession of bearers and bearesses strung out behind me like the tail of a kite, anything from a tea-tray to the sugar tongs being sufficient excuse for joining the parade.

When dressing for dinner, if I press the button, no less than six little, picture maids flutter to my door, each begging for the honor of fastening me up the back.  How delighted Jack would be to assign them this particular honor for life.  Such whispers over the wonders of a foreign-made dress as they struggle with the curious fastenings! (They should hear my lord’s fierce language!) Each one takes a turn till some sort of connection is made between hook and eye.  All is so earnestly done I dare not laugh or wiggle with impatience.  I may sail into dinner with the upper hook in the lower eye and the middle all askew, but the service is so graciously given, I would rather have my dress upside down than