"Do you know the Japanese well?" Lady Everington returned to the highroad of her inquiry. "No, nobody does; they are a most secretive people." "Do you think that, if the Barringtons go to Japan, there is any danger of Asako being drawn back into the bosom of her family?" "No, I shouldn't think so," Laking replied, "Japanese life is so very uncomfortable, you know, even to the Japs themselves, when once they have got used to living in Europe or America. They sleep on the floor, their clothes are inconvenient, and their food is nasty, even in the houses of the rich ones." "Yes, it must be a peculiar country. What do you think is the greatest shock for the average traveller who goes there?" "Lady Georgie, you are asking me very searching questions to-day. I don't think I will answer any more." "Just this one," she pleaded. He considered his boots again for a moment, and then, raising his face to hers with that humorous challenging look which he assumes when on the verge of some indiscretion, he replied,-- "The _Yoshiwara_." "Yes," said her Ladyship, "I have heard of such a place. It is a kind of Vanity Fair, isn't it, for all the _cocottes_ Of Tokyo?" "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. Some of the girls sit there stolidly like stuffed images, some of them come to the bars and try to catch hold of the passers-by, just like monkeys, and joke with them and shout after them. But I could not understand what they said--fortunately, perhaps. The girls,--there must be several thousands--are all dressed up in bright kimonos. It really is a very pretty sight, until one begins to think. 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. "Such a purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished belief. We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission of guilt and an act of worship. To us, even to the readiest sinners among us, woman is always something divine. The lowest assignation of the streets has at least a disguise of romance. It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the Japanese, woman must be merely animal. You buy a girl as you buy a cow." Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing.