Asako Fujinami, whom he had first met at dinner, at Lady Everington’s, had crossed his mind just like an exquisite bar of melody.  He made no comments at the time, but he could not forget her.  The haunting tune came back to him again and again.  By the time that she had floated in his arms through three or four dances, the spell had worked. La belle dame sans merci, the enchantress who lurks in every woman, had him in thrall.  Her simplest observations seemed to him to be pearls of wisdom, her every movement a triumph of grace.

“Reggie,” he said to his friend Forsyth, “what do you think of that little Japanese girl?”

Reggie, who was a diplomat by profession and a musician by the grace of God, and whose intuition was almost feminine especially where Geoffrey was concerned, answered,—­

“Why, Geoffrey, are you thinking of marrying her?”

“By Jove!” exclaimed his friend, starting at the thought as at a discovery; “but I, don’t think she’d have me.  I’m not her sort.”

“You never can tell,” suggested Reggie mischievously; “She is quite unspoilt, and she has twenty thousand a year.  She is unique.  You could not possibly get her confused with somebody else’s wife, as so many people seem to do when they get married.  Why not try?”

Reggie thought that such a mating was impossible, but it amused him to play with the idea.  As for Lady Everington, who knew every one so well, and who thought that she knew them perfectly, she never guessed.

“I think, Geoffrey, that you like to be seen with Asako,” she said, “just to point the contrast.”

Her confession to her sister, Mrs. Markham, was the truth.  She had made a mistake; she had destined Asako for somebody quite different.  It was the girl herself who had been the first to enlighten her.  She came to her hostess’s boudoir one evening before the labours of the night began.

“Lady Georgie,” she had said—­Lady Everington is Lady Georgie to all who know her even a little. “Il faut que je vous dise quelque chose.”  The girl’s face glanced downward and sideways, as her habit was when embarrassed.

When Asako spoke in French it meant that something grave was afoot.  She was afraid that her unsteady English might muddle what she intended to say.  Lady Everington knew that it must be another proposal; she had already dealt with three.

“Eh bien, cette fois qui est-il?” she asked.

“Le capitaine Geoffroi” answered Asako.  Then her friend knew that it was serious.

“What did you say to him?” she demanded.

“I tell him he must ask you.”

“But why drag me into it?  It’s your own affair.”

“In France and in Japan,” said Asako, “a girl do not say Yes and No herself.  It is her father and her mother who decide.  I have no father or mother; so I think he must ask you.”

“And what do you want me to say?”