after diplomatic dinner parties to be able to swear for an hour or so, big round oaths in the company of a dear beloved one who would not understand me.  So my teacher undertook to provide me with a suitable female companion.  He did.  In fact, he introduced me to his sister; and the suitability was based on the fact that she held the same position under my predecessor, a man whom I dislike exceedingly.  But this I only found out later on.  She was dull, deadly dull.  I couldn’t even make her jealous.  She was as dull as my Japanese grammar; and when I had passed my examination and burnt my books, I dismissed her.”

“Aubrey, what a very wicked story!”

“No, Lady Georgie, it was not even wicked.  She was not real enough to sin with.  The affair had not even the excitement of badness to keep it going.”

“Do you know the Japanese well?” Lady Everington returned to the highroad of her inquiry.

“No, nobody does; they are a most secretive people.”

“Do you think that, if the Barringtons go to Japan, there is any danger of Asako being drawn back into the bosom of her family?”

“No, I shouldn’t think so,” Laking replied, “Japanese 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.”