In and out of these side streets flowed a multitude of boys and men, in unbelted summer robes of light colors, lazily vivacious, moving on naked, clogged feet, making the air a bluish haze of cigarette smoke. In the blazing dusk they suggested the populace of some crowded Spa strolling to the pools in flowing bath-robes and straw hats. On some of the far balconies Barbara could see women leaning, in ornate costumes, smoking tiny pipes. Here and there girls strolled past her, for the most part in couples, gaudily clad, their cheeks white with rice-powder, their lips carmined, their blue-black hair wonderfully coaxed and pomaded into shining wings and whorls, thrust through with many jeweled hair-pins, like slim daggers. They jested freely with the men they passed, laughing continually with low voices. In a doorway a slim girl, dressed in deep red, gleefully tickled with one bare foot the hide of a shaggy poodle vainly essaying slumber. As she went on, the crowd became more numerous; men's _kimono_ brushed Barbara's skirts and eyes stared at her with contemplative boldness. "Madame!" She felt a hand pluck her sleeve. It was a young Japanese, in foreign dress, with a shining brown derby, shining aureated teeth, and shining silver-handled cane. "Madame wishes a guide?" he inquired. She recollected him instantly as the youth who had slipped into her hand the printed card when she had landed from the ship at Yokohama. She did not know the name of the theater she had left, however, so shook her head and hurried on. Without warning she emerged into the nun-like quiet of a park with an acre of growing trees and an irregular little lake that lay dark and still under the moon. Beside it was a stretch of hard, beaten earth, seemingly a playground. Benches were set under the trees, and among them moved or sat other girls in costumes like those she had seen on the pavement. At sight of Barbara's foreign dress some of them giggled with amusement and called to one another in repressed, laughing voices. A bell struck somewhere, and, as though this had been a signal, they all rose and departed, passing out by the way Barbara had come. She traversed the park--to come face to face with a high palisade. She took a new direction, only to come again on the same barrier. The park seemed only a part of a vast inclosure into which she had penetrated. Had this no outlet save the gate at which she had entered? Wondering, she retraced her steps to the lighted pavement. She was puzzled now, and turned into one of the cross streets. Its blaze of light, its movement and murmur of humanity bewildered her for a moment; then what she saw instantly arrested her.