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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Ambassador was reporting home on every imaginable subject from political assassination to the manufacture of celluloid. This was part of Lady Cynthia's scheme. She was determined to throw Yaé Smith and Geoffrey Barrington together all the time, and to risk the consequences. So Yaé though she had her room at the hotel, became an inmate of Reggie's villa.
But for the first time in his life he was in the grip of an elemental natural force, a thing foreign to his experience of women in marriage or out of it. "Yaé, don't," he gasped, pushing the girl away. "I can't; I'm married." "Married!" she screamed. "Does marriage hurt like this? Love me, love me, Geoffrey. You must love me, you will!" "The rhapsody is ended!"
It was done promptly and ruthlessly; for the Baroness's gossip carried weight throughout the diplomatic, professional and missionary circles, even where her person was held in ridicule. The facts of Hoskin's suicide became known. Nice women dropped Yaé entirely; and bad men ran after her with redoubled zest. Yaé did not realize her ostracism.
There was a warmth, a sincerity in the tone which made Asako stare at her companion. But the childish face was innocent and smiling. The languid curve of the smile and the opalescence of the green eyes betrayed none of their secrets to Asako's inexperience. Reggie sat down at the piano, and, still watching the two women, he began to play. "This is the Yaé Sonata," he explained to Geoffrey.
Yaé was sorry to hear of the accident; but she had long ceased to be interested in Hoskin, the reticence of whose passion had seemed like a touch of ice to her fevered nerves. But this was Baroness Miyazaki's opportunity to discredit Yaé, to crush her rival out of serious competition, and to degrade her to the demi-monde.
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-
Geoffrey was clutching pathetically for anything which he could understand or appeal to in this elusive person. "I love him," said Yaé, pirouetting on her white toes near the edge of the chasm, "and I love you and I love any man who is worth loving!" They returned to the lake in silence. Geoffrey's sermon was abortive. This girl was altogether outside the circle of his code of Good Form.
"We a' ken," continued Peter, "that Geordie is ready for work noo', this fower week syne, but Black Jock says he has no places, an' forby two strangers got jobs just yesterday." "I ken for yae thing that there's fower places staunin' in Millar's Level," said Jamie Lauder, "an' I'm telt there's five or six staunin' in the Black Horse Dook.
"Oh, those are the hikité chaya" said Yaé glibly, "the Yoshiwara tea-houses." "Do they live there?" asked Asako. "Oh, no; rich men who come to the Yoshiwara do not go to the big houses where the oiran live. They go to the tea-houses; and they order food and geisha to sing, and the oiran to be brought from the big house. It is more private.
Asako had received that day a pathetic letter from Geoffrey, giving detail for detail his account of his dealings with Yaé Smith, begging her to understand and believe him, and to forgive him for the crime which he had never committed. In spite of her cousin's incredulity, Asako's resolution was shaken by this appeal.
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