"A man who goes about like that," he said, "is a living lie." * * * * * Two days later, early in the morning, they left Kyoto by the great metal high road of Japan, which has replaced the famous way known as the _Tokaido_, sacred in history, legend and art. Every stone has its message for Japanese eyes, every tree its association with poetry or romance. Even among Western connoisseurs of Japanese wood engraving, its fifty-two resting places are as familiar as the Stations of the Cross. Such is the _Tokaido_, the road between the two capitals of Kyoto and Tokyo, still haunted by the ghosts of the Emperor's ox-drawn wagons, the _Shoguns'_ lacquered palanquins, by feudal warriors in their death-like armour, and by the swinging strides of the _samurai_. "Look, look, Fujiyama!" There was a movement in the observation-car, where Geoffrey and his wife were watching the unfolding of their new country. The sea was away to the right beyond the tea-fields and the pine-woods. To the left was the base of a mountain. Its summit was wrapped in cloud. From the fragment visible, it was possible to appreciate the architecture of the whole--_ex pede Herculem_. It took the train quite one hour to travel over that arc of the circuit of Fuji, which it must pass on its way to Tokyo. During this time, the curtained presence of the great mountain dominated the landscape. Everything seemed to lead up to that mantle of cloud. The terraced rice fields rose towards it, the trees slanted towards it, the moorland seemed to be pulled upwards, and the skin of the earth was stretched taut over some giant limb which had pushed itself up from below, the calm sea was waiting for its reflection, and even the microscopic train seemed to swing in its orbit round the mountain like an unwilling satellite. "It's a pity we can't see it," said Geoffrey. "Yes; it's the only big thing in the whole darned country," said a saturnine American, sitting opposite; "and then, when you get on to it, it's just a heap of cinders." Asako was not worrying about the landscape. Her thoughts were directed to a family of well-to-do Japanese, first-class passengers, who had settled in the observation car for half an hour or so, and had then withdrawn. There was a father, his wife and two daughters, wax-like figures who did not utter a word but glided shadow-like in and out of the compartment. Were they relations of hers?