Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had become quite serious.

“After all,” she said, “is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at night?”

“It is not a question of better or worse,” argued Laking.  “Such a purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished belief.  We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission of guilt and an act of worship.  To us, even to the readiest sinners among us, woman is always something divine.  The lowest assignation of the streets has at least a disguise of romance.  It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them.  But to the Japanese, woman must be merely animal.  You buy a girl as you buy a cow.”

Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing.

“Well, that is true, after all, whether in Piccadilly or in the Yoshiwara.  All prostitution is just a commercial transaction.”

“Perhaps,” said the young diplomat, “but what about the Ideal at the back of our minds?  Passion is often a grotesque incarnation of the Ideal, like a savage’s rude image of his god.  A glimpse of the ideal is possible in Piccadilly, and impossible in the Yoshiwara.  The divine something was visible in Marguerite Gautier; little Hugh saw it even in Nana.  For one thing, here in London, in the dirtiest of sordid dramas, it is still the woman who gives, but in Japan it is always the man who takes.”

“Aubrey,” said his friend, “I had no idea that you were a poet, or in other words that you ever talked nonsense without laughing.  You think such a shock is strong enough to upset the Barrington menage?”

“It will give furiously to think,” he answered, “to poor old Geoffrey, who is a very straight, clean and honest fellow, not overused to furious thinking.  I suppose if one married a monkey, one might persuade oneself of her humanity, until one saw her kindred in cages.”

“Poor little Asako, my latest god-daughter!” cried Lady Everington.  “Really, Aubrey, you are very rude!”

“I did not mean to be,” said Laking penitently.  “She is a most ingratiating little creature, like a lazy kitten; but I think it is unwise for him to take her to Japan.  All kinds of latent orientalisms may develop.”

* * * * *

The spring was at hand, the season of impulse, when we obey most readily the sudden stirrings of our hearts.  Even in the torrid climate of Egypt, squalls of rain passed over like stray birds of passage.  Asako Barrington felt the fresh influence and the desire to do new things in new places.  Hitherto she had evinced very little inclination to revisit the home of her ancestors.  But on their return from the temples of Luxor, she said quite unexpectedly to Geoffrey,—­

“If we go to Japan now, we shall be in time to see the cherry-blossoms.”

“Why, little Yum Yum,” cried her husband, delighted, “are you tired of Pharaohs?”