If only the real Asako had been with him instead of this enigmatic and disquieting image of her!

The Japanese, who have an innate love for natural beauty, never fail to mark an exceptional view with a little bench or shelter for travelers, whence they can obtain the best perspective.  If sight-seers frequent the spot in any number, there will be an old dame en guerite with her picture post-cards and her Ebisu Beer, her “Champagne Cider,” her sembei (round and salted biscuits) and her tale of the local legend.

“Irrasshai!  Irrasshai;” she pipes.  “Come, come, please rest a little!”

But the cascade above Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama is only one among the thousand lesser waterfalls of this mountain country.  It is honoured merely by an unsteady bench under a broken roof, and by a rope knotted round the trunk of a tall tree in mid-stream to indicate that the locality is an abode of spirits, and to warn passers-by against inconsiderately offending the Undine.

Geoffrey and Yae were balancing themselves on the bench, gazing at the race of foam and at the burnished bracken.  The Englishman was clearing his mind for action.

“Miss Smith,” he began at last, “do you think you will be happy with Reggie?”

“He says so, big captain,” answered the little half-caste, her mouth queerly twisted.

“Because if you are not happy, Reggie won’t be happy; and if you are neither of you happy, you will be sorry that you married.”!

“But we are not married yet,” said the girl, “we are only engaged.”

“But you will be married sometime, I suppose?”

“This year, next year, sometime, never!” laughed Yae.  “It is nice to be engaged, and it is such a protection.  When I am not engaged, all the old cats, Lady Cynthia and the rest, say that I flirt.  Now when I am engaged, my fiance is here to shield me.  Then they dare not say things, or it comes round to him, and he is angry.  So I can do anything I like when I am engaged.”

This was a new morality for Geoffrey.  It knocked the text from under the sermon which he had been preparing.  She was as preposterous as Reggie; but she was not, like him, conscious of her preposterousness.

“Then, when you are married, will you flirt?” asked her companion.

“I think so,” said Yae gravely.  “Besides, Reggie only wants me to dress me up and write music about me.  If I am always the same like an English doll wife, he won’t get many tunes to play.  Reggie is like a girl.”

“Reggie is too good for you,” said the Englishman, roughly.

“I don’t think so,” said Yae, “I don’t want Reggie, but Reggie wants me.”

“What do you want then?”

“I want a great big man with arms and legs like a wrestler.  A man who hunts lions.  He will pick me up like you did at Kamakura, big captain, and throw me in the air and catch me again.  And I will take him away from the woman he loves, so that he will hate me and beat me for it.  And when he sees on my back the marks of the whip and the blood he will love me again so strongly that he will become weak and silly like a baby.  Then I will look after him and nurse him; and we will drink wine together.  And we will go for long rides together on horseback in the moonlight galloping along the sands by the edge of the sea!”