“Why, no, they couldn’t,” replied Madame Oshima.  “Not if you keep your kimo on.”

“But they would see my figure.”

“Well, I thought you just said that was what you were afraid they wouldn’t see.”

“But I don’t mean that way—­they—­they could see the shape of my—­my legs,” said Ethel, blushing crimson.

“Are you ashamed that your body has such vulgar parts?” returned the older woman.

“No, of course not,” said Ethel, choking back her embarrassment.  “But it’s wicked for a girl to let men know such things.”

“Oh, they all know it,” replied Madame Oshima, “they learn it in school.”

At this the highly strung Ethel burst into sobs.

“There, there now,” said her companion, regretting that she had spoken sarcastically.  “I forget that I once had such ideas also.  We’ll talk some more about it after while.  You are nervous and worried now and must have more rest.”

The next day Madame Oshima more tactfully approached the subject and showed her protege that while in Rome it was more modest to do as the Romans do; and that, moreover, it was necessary for her own good and theirs that she attract as little attention as possible, and to those that recognized her Caucasian blood appear, superficially, at least, as a naturalized citizen of Japan.

So, amid blushes and tears, protestations and laughter, Ethel accepted the kimo, or one-piece Japanese garment, and the outer flowing cloak to be worn on state occasions when freedom of bodily movement was not required.  Her feather-adorned hat was discarded altogether and her ill-shapen high-heeled boots replaced by airy slippers of braided fiber.

Her rather short stature and her hair—­which fortunately enough was black—­served to lessen her conspicuousness, especially when dressed in the fashion followed by Japanese girls; and with the leaving off of the use of cosmetics and the spending of several hours a day in the flower garden even her pallid complexion suffered rapid change.

It was about a fortnight before Professor Oshima returned from Tokio.  Upon his arrival Ethel at once pleaded with him to be sent to America, but the scientist slowly shook his head.

“It is too late,” he said; “there is going to be a war.”

Thus it happened that Ethel Calvert was retained in the Professor’s family as a sort of English tutor to his children, and introduced as a relative of his wife, and no one suspected that she was one of the hated Americans.

* * *

The trouble between Japan and the United States dated back to the early part of the century.  It was deep-seated and bitter, and was not only the culmination of a rivalry between the leading nations of the great races of mankind, but a rivalry between two great ideas or policies that grew out in opposite directions from the age of unprecedented mechanical and scientific progress that marked the dawn of the twentieth century.