Behind one of these walls the weeping of a woman was to be heard—monotonous, hopeless, heartbreaking, like a long spell of rainy days which envelope the summit of Fuji Yama. “That’s Yuki,” murmured September, with a fierce glance at the paper prison of this pitiful weeping. “She’s been crying since midnight, as if she wanted to be the source of a new salt sea.... This evening she will have a swollen potato on her face instead of a nose.... Who pays for it?—I do!” “Why is the little snowflake crying?” asked Slim, half thoughtlessly, for the roaring of the human voice, coming from the depths of the house occupied all the ears and attention he possessed. “Oh, she isn’t the only one,” answered September, with the tolerant mien of one who owns a prosperous harbour tavern in Shanghai. “But she is at least tame. Plum Blossom has been snapping about her like a young Puma, and Miss Rainbow has thrown the Saki bowl at the mirror and is trying to cut her artery with the chips—and all on account of this white silk youngster.” The agitated expression on Slim’s face deepened. He shook his head. “How did he manage to get such a hold over them....” he said, and it was not meant to be a question. September shrugged his shoulders. “Maohee....” he said in a sing-song tone, as though beginning one of those Greenland fairy tales, which, the quicker they sent one to sleep are the more highly appreciated. “What is that: Maohee?” asked Slim, irritably. September drew his head down between his shoulders. The Irish and the British blood-corpuscles in his veins seemed to be falling out, violently: but the impenetrable Japanese smile covered this up with its mantle before it could grow dangerous. “You don’t know what Maohee is.... Not a soul in the great Metropolis knows.... No.... Nobody. But here in Yoshiwara they all know.” “I wish to know, too, September,” said Slim. Generations of Roman lackeys bowed within September as he said, “Certainly, sir!” But they did not get the better of the wink of the heavy-drinking lying grandfathers in Copenhagen. “Maohee, that is.... Isn’t it odd, that, of all the ten thousand who have been guests here in Yoshiwara and who had experienced in detail what Maohee stands for, outside they know nothing more about it? Don’t walk so fast, sir. The yelling gentleman down there won’t run away from us—and if I am to explain to you what Maohee means....” “Drugs, I expect, September—?” “My dear sir, the lion is also a cat. Maohee is a drug: but what is a cat beside a lion? Maohee is from the other side of the earth. It is the divine, the only thing—because it is the only thing which makes us feel the intoxication of the others.” “The intoxication—of the others....?” repeated Slim, stopping still. September smiled the smile of Hotei the god of Happiness, who likes little children. He laid the hand of the Borgia, with the suspiciously blue shimmering nails on Slim’s arm.