Still the geisha kept bringing more and more food in a desultory way quite unlike our system of fixed and regular courses.  Still Ito kept pressing Geoffrey to eat, while at the same time apologizing for the quality of the food with exasperating repetition.  Geoffrey had fallen into the error of thinking that the fish and its accompanying dishes which had been laid before him at first comprised the whole of the repast.  He had polished them off with gusto; and had then discovered to his alarm that they were merely hors d’oeuvres.  Nor did he observe until too late how little the other guests were eating.  There was no discourtesy apparently in leaving the whole of a dish untasted, or in merely picking at it from time to time.  Rudeness consisted in refusing any dish.

Plates of broiled meat and sandwiches arrived, bowls of soup, grilled eels on skewers—­that most famous of Tokyo delicacies; finally, the inevitable rice with whose adhesive substance the Japanese epicure fills up the final crannies in his well-lined stomach.  It made its appearance in a round drum-like tub of clean white wood, as big as a bandbox, and bound round with shining brass.  The girls served the sticky grains into the china rice-bowl with a flat wooden ladle.

“Japanese people always take two bowls of rice at least,” observed Ito.  “One bowl very unlucky; at the funeral we only eat one bowl.”

This to Geoffrey was the coup de grace.  He had only managed to stuff down his bowl through a desperate sense of duty.

“If I do have a second,” he gasped, “it will be my own funeral.”

But this joke did not run in the well-worn lines of Japanese humour.  Mr. Ito merely thought that the big Englishman, having drunk much sake, was talking nonsense.

All the guests were beginning to circulate now; the quadrille was becoming more and more elaborate.  They were each calling on each other and taking wine.  The talk was becoming more animated.  A few bold spirits began to laugh and joke with the geisha.  Some had laid aside their cloaks; and some even had loosened their kimonos at the neck, displaying hairy chests.  The stiff symmetry of the dinner party was quite broken up.  The guests were scattered like rooks, bobbing, scratching and pecking about on the yellow mats.  The bright plumage of the geisha stood out against their sombre monotony.

Presently the geisha began to dance at the far end of the room.  Ten of the little girls did their steps, a slow dance full of posturing with coloured handkerchiefs.  Three of the elder geisha in plain grey kimonos squatted behind the dancers, strumming on their samisens.  But there was very little music either in the instrument or in the melody.  The sound of the string’s twang and the rattle of the bone plectrum drowned the sweetness of the note.  The result was a kind of dry clatter or cackle which is ingenious, but not pleasing.