"Miss Smith tells me," said Asako, "that all these lovely gay creatures are Yoshiwara girls; and that you can see them there now." "Not that identical lady of course," said Reggie, who had joined the group by the fireside, "she died a hundred years ago; but her professional great-granddaughters are still there." "And I can see them!" Asako clapped her hands. "Ladies are allowed to go and look? It does not matter? It is not improper?" "Oh, no," said Yaé Smith, "my brothers have taken me. Would you like to go?" "Yes, I would," said Asako, glancing at her husband, who, however, showed no signs of approval. CHAPTER IX ITO SAN _Ama no hara Fumi-todorokashi Naru-kami mo Omou-naka wo ba Sakuru mono ka wa?_ Can even the God of Thunder Whose footfall resounds In the plains of the sky Put asunder Those whom love joins? Geoffrey's conscience was disturbed. His face was lined and worried with thought, such as had left him untroubled since the effervescences of his early youth. Like many young men of his caste, he had soon submitted all the baffling riddles of conduct to the thumb rule of Good Form. This Yoshiwara question was to him something more than a moral conundrum. It was a subtle attack by the wife of his bosom, aided and abetted by his old friend Reggie Forsyth and by the mysterious forces of this unfamiliar land as typified by Yaé Smith, against the citadel of Good Form, against the stronghold of his principles. Geoffrey himself wished to see the Yoshiwara. His project had been that one evening, when Asako had been invited to dinner by friends, he and Reggie would go and look at the place. This much was sanctioned by Good Form. For him to take his wife there, and for people to know that he had done so, would be the worst of Bad Form, the conduct of a rank outsider. Unfortunately, it was also Bad Form for him to discuss the matter with Asako. A terrible dilemma. Was it possible that the laws of Good and Bad Form were only locally binding, and that here in Japan they were no longer valid? Reggie was different. He was so awfully clever. He could extemporize on Good Form as he could extemporize on the piano. Besides, he was a victim to the artistic temperament, which cannot control itself. But Reggie had not been improved by his sojourn in this queer country, or he would never have so far forgotten himself as to speak in such a way in the presence of ladies. Geoffrey would give him a good beating at tennis; and then, having reduced him to a fit state of humility, he would have it out with him. For Barrington was not a man to nurse displeasure against his friends.