Yae Smith seemed most anxious to please in spite of the affectation of her poses, which perhaps were necessary to her, lest, looking so much like a plaything, she might be greeted as such.  She always wanted to be liked by people.  This was her leading characteristic.  It was at the root of her frailties—­a soil overfertilized from which weeds spring apace.

She was voluble in a gentle cat-like way, praising the rings on Asako’s fingers, and the cut and material of her dress.  But her eyes were forever glancing towards Geoffrey.  He was so very tall and broad, standing in the framework of the folding doors beside the slim figure of Reggie, more girlish than ever in the skirts of his kimono.

Captain Barrington, the son of a lord!  How fine he must look in uniform, in that cavalry uniform, with the silver cuirass and the plumed helmet like the English soldiers in her father’s books at home!

“Your husband is very big,” she said to Asako.

“Yes, he is,” said Asako; “much too big for Japan.”

“Oh, I should like that,” said the little Eurasian, “it must be nice.”

There was a warmth, a sincerity in the tone which made Asako stare at her companion.  But the childish face was innocent and smiling.  The languid curve of the smile and the opalescence of the green eyes betrayed none of their secrets to Asako’s inexperience.

Reggie sat down at the piano, and, still watching the two women, he began to play.

“This is the Yae Sonata,” he explained to Geoffrey.

It began with some bars from an old Scottish song: 

  “Had we never loved so sadly,
  Had we never loved so madly,
  Never loved and never parted,
  We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

Insensibly the pathetic melody faded away into the staccato beat of a geisha’s song, with more rhythm than tune, which doubled and redoubled its pace, stumbling and leaping up again over strange syncopations.

All of a sudden the musician stopped.

“I can’t describe your wife, now that I see her,” he said.  “I don’t know any dignified old Japanese music, something like the gavottes of Couperin only in a setting of Kyoto and gold screens; and then there must be a dash of something very English which she has acquired from you—­’Home, Sweet Home’ or ‘Sally in our Alley.’”

“Never mind, old chap!” said Geoffrey; “play ‘Father’s home again!’”

Reggie shook himself; and then struck up the rolling chorus; but, as he interpreted it, his mood turned pensive again.  The tone was hushed, the time slower.  The vulgar tune expressed itself suddenly in deep melancholy, It brought back to the two young men more forcibly than the most inspired concerto, the memory of England, the sparkle of the theatres, the street din of London, and the warmth of good company—­all that had seemed sweet to them in a time which was distant now.