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Reggie would never be attracted to native women; and he had not the dry inquisitiveness of his predecessor, Aubrey Laking, which might induce him to buy and keep a woman for whom he felt no affection. The love which can exchange no thoughts in speech was altogether too crude for him. It was his emotions, rather than his senses, which were always craving for amorous excitement.
You must tell her all about Tokyo. It is her native city; but she has not seen it since she was in long clothes, if Japanese babies wear such things." Aubrey Laking and Barrington had been at Eton together. They were old friends, and were delighted to meet once more.
He might as well preach vegetarianism to a leopard. Yet she fascinated him, as she fascinated all men who were not as dry as Aubrey Laking. She was so pretty, so frail and so fearless. Life had not given her a fair chance; and she appealed to the chivalrous instinct in men, as well as to their less creditable passions.
"It's more than that," Laking answered; "it is a market of human flesh, with nothing to disguise the crude fact except the picturesqueness of the place. It is a square enclosure as large as a small town. In this enclosure are shops, and in the shop windows women are displayed just like goods, or like animals in cages; for the windows have wooden bars.
"I hev, sir, that I hev, and all the more because Lucius Yorke hes been here while you were away and he left a promise with the lads and lassies to come again and give you a bit of his mind when you bed finished your laking and larking and could at least frame yourself to watch the men and women working for you. Yorke is a sly one you ought to watch him."
They have their price tickets hung up in the shop windows, one shilling up to one pound. That is the greatest shock which Japan has in store for the ordinary tourist." Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had become quite serious. "After all," she said, "is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at night?" "It is not a question of better or worse," argued Laking.
With a courteous farewell to his companions, he advanced to greet her. "Aubrey Laking," she exclaimed, "you never answered the letter I wrote to you at Tokyo." "Dear Lady Georgie, I left Tokyo ages ago. It followed me back to England; and I am now second secretary at Christiania. That is why I am in Monte Carlo!" "Then let me introduce you to Asako Fujinami, who is now Mrs. Barrington.
Yaé was grieved by this sudden loss of both her lovers. It left her in a condition of double widowhood from which she was most anxious to escape. But now she was becoming more fastidious. The school teachers and the dagos fascinated her no longer. Her soldier friends had introduced her into Embassy circles, and she wished to remain there. She fixed on Aubrey Laking for her next attempt, but from him she received her first rebuff. Having lured him into a tête-
"If I were you," he said dryly, "I should go to Paris or New York. You will find much more scope there." Fortunately fate soon exchanged Aubrey Laking for Reggie Forsyth. He was just what suited her for a time. But a certain impersonality in his admiration, his fits of reverie, the ascendancy of music over his mind, made her come to regret her more masculine lovers.
She had had two before, and had found them complimentary to one another and agreeable to her. She wanted to sit on Geoffrey's knee and to feel his strong arms round her. But she must not be too sudden in her advances, or she would lose him as she had lost Laking. It is easy to condemn Yaé as a bad girl, a born cocotte. Yet such a judgment would not be entirely equitable.
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