Reggie ceased playing.  The two girls were sitting together now on the big black cushion in front of the fire.  They were looking at a portfolio of Japanese prints, Reggie’s embryo collection.

The young diplomat said to his friend: 

“Geoffrey, you’ve not been in the East long enough to be exasperated by it.  I have.  So our ideas will not be in sympathy.”

“It’s not what I thought it was going to be, I must admit.  Everything is so much of a muchness.  If you’ve seen one temple you’ve seen the lot, and the same with everything here.”

“That is the first stage, Disappointment.  We have heard so much of the East and its splendours, the gorgeous East and the rest of it.  The reality is small and sordid, and like so much that is ugly in our own country.”

“Yes, they wear shocking bad clothes, don’t they, directly they get out of kimonos; and even the kimonos look dingy and dirty.”

“They are.” said Reggie.  “Yours would be, if you had to keep a wife and eight children on thirty shillings a month.”

Then he added: 

“The second stage in the observer’s progress is Discovery.  Have you read Lafcadio Hearn’s books about Japan?”

“Yes. some of them,” answered Geoffrey.  “It strikes me that he was a thorough-paced liar.”

“No, he was a poet, a poet; and he jumped over the first stage to dwell for some time in the second, probably because he was by nature short-sighted.  That is a great advantage for discoverers.”

“But what do you mean by the second stage?”

“The stage of Discovery!  Have you ever walked about a Japanese city in the twilight when the evening bell sounds from a hidden temple?  Have you turned into the by-streets and watched the men returning to their wise little houses and the family groups assembled to meet them and help them change into their kimonos?  Have you heard the splashing and the chatter of the bath-houses which are the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip?  Have you heard the broken samisen music tracking you down a street of geisha houses?  Have you seen the geisha herself in her blue cloak sitting rigid and expressionless in the rickshaw which is carrying her off to meet her lover?  Have you heard the drums of Priapus beating from the gay quarters?  Have you watched the crowds which gather round a temple festival, buying queer little plants for their homes and farthing toys for their children, crowding to the fortune-teller’s booth for news of good luck and bad luck, throwing their penny to the god and clapping their hands to attract his attention?  Have you seen anything of this without a feeling of deep pleasure and a wonder as to how these people live and think, what we have got in common with them, and what we have got to learn from them?”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Geoffrey.  “It’s all very picturesque, but they always seem to be hiding something.”