"Who are the Goonies?" asked Geoffrey. "The rest of the old tortoises. They are missionaries and professors and their wives and daughters. The sons, of course, run away and go to the bad. There are quite a lot of the Goonies, and I see much more of them than I do of the _geishas_ and the _samurais_ and the _harakiris_ and all the Eastern things, which Gwendolen will talk about when she gets home. She is going to write a book, poor girl. There's nothing else to do in this country except to write about what is not here. It's very easy, you know. You copy it all out of some one else's book, only you illustrate it with your own snapshots. The publishers say that there is a small but steady demand, chiefly for circulating libraries in America. You see, I have been approached already on the subject, and I have not been here many months. So you've seen Reggie Forsyth already, he tells me. What do you think of him?" "Much the same as usual; he seemed rather bored." Lady Cynthia had led her guest away from the fireside, where Gwendolen Cairns was burbling to Asako. Geoffrey could feel the searchlight of her judicial eye upon him, and a sensation like the pause when a great man enters a room. Something essential was going to invade the commonplace talk. "Captain Barrington, your coming here just now is most providential. Reggie Forsyth is not bored at all, far from it." "I thought he would like the country," said Geoffrey guardedly. "He doesn't like the country. Why should he? But he likes somebody in the country. Now do you understand?" "Yes," agreed Geoffrey, "he showed me the photograph of a half Japanese girl. He said that she was his inspiration for local colour." "Exactly, and she's turning his brain yellow," snapped Lady Cynthia, forgetting, as everybody else did, including Geoffrey himself, that the same criticism might apply to Asako. However, Geoffrey was becoming more sensitive of late. He blushed a little and fidgeted, but he answered,-- "Reggie has always been easily inflammable." "Oh, in England, perhaps, it's good for a boy's education; but out here, Captain Barrington, it is different. I have lived for a long time East of Suez; and I know the danger of these love episodes in countries where there is nothing else to do, nothing else to talk about. I am a gossip myself; so I know the harm gossip can do." "But is it so serious, Lady Cynthia? Reggie rather laughed about it to me. He said, 'I am in love always--and never!'"