“That sounds real enough,” grunted Geoffrey, “and very like a man.”

Perhaps, innocent as she was, Asako enjoyed playing off Tanaka against her husband, just as it certainly amused her to watch the jealousy between Titine and the Japanese.  It gave her a pleasant sense of power to see her big husband look so indignant.

“How old do you think Tanaka is?” he asked her one day.

“Oh, about eighteen or nineteen,” she answered.  She was not yet used to the deceptiveness of Japanese appearances.

“He does not look more sometimes,” said her husband; “but he has the ways and the experience of a very old hand.  I wouldn’t mind betting you that he is thirty.”

“All right,” said Asako, “give me the jade Buddha if you are wrong.”

“And what will you give me if I am right?” said Geoffrey.

“Kisses,” replied his wife.

Geoffrey went out to look for Tanaka.  In a quarter of an hour he came back, triumphant.

“My kisses, sweetheart,” he demanded.

“Wait,” said Asako; “how old is he?”

“I went out of the front door and there was Master Tanaka, telling the rickshaw-men the latest gossip about us.  I said to him, ’Tanaka, are you married?’ ‘Yes, Lordship,’ he answered, ‘I am widower.’  ’Any children?’ I asked again.  ‘I have two progenies,’ he said; ’they are soldiers of His Majesty the Emperor.’  ‘Why, how old are you?’ I asked.  ‘Forty-three years,’ he answered.  ’You are very well preserved for a man of your age,’ I said, and I have come back for my kisses.”

After this monstrous deception Geoffrey had declared that he would dismiss Tanaka.

“A man who goes about like that,” he said, “is a living lie.”

* * * * *

Two days later, early in the morning, they left Kyoto by the great metal high road of Japan, which has replaced the famous way known as the Tokaido, sacred in history, legend and art.  Every stone has its message for Japanese eyes, every tree its association with poetry or romance.  Even among Western connoisseurs of Japanese wood engraving, its fifty-two resting places are as familiar as the Stations of the Cross.  Such is the Tokaido, the road between the two capitals of Kyoto and Tokyo, still haunted by the ghosts of the Emperor’s ox-drawn wagons, the Shoguns’ lacquered palanquins, by feudal warriors in their death-like armour, and by the swinging strides of the samurai.

“Look, look, Fujiyama!”

There was a movement in the observation-car, where Geoffrey and his wife were watching the unfolding of their new country.  The sea was away to the right beyond the tea-fields and the pine-woods.  To the left was the base of a mountain.  Its summit was wrapped in cloud.  From the fragment visible, it was possible to appreciate the architecture of the whole—­ex pede Herculem.  It took the train quite one hour to travel over that