"My weapons are a smile and a little fan—
Sayonara, Sayonara...."
It was the song of the "Fox-Woman." She slipped the purse hastily back into her pocket.
The Fox-Woman! As she walked on, for the first time the phrase came to Barbara with a sudden, sharp sense of actuality. There were fox-women of every race and clime, women who came, with painted smile, between true lovers! What if she herself—what if here, in this land, that baleful wisdom were to strike home to her? Like a keen blade the thought pierced through her, and something shy and sweet, newborn in her breast, shrank startled and fearful from it.
The street had narrowed curiously. It was paved now from side to side with flat stone flags. She realized all at once that there were no longer rick'sha to be seen, only people afoot. A blaze of light caught her eye, and she looked up to see, spanning the street, an arched gateway, at either side of which stood a policeman, quiet and imperturbable. Its curved top was decorated with colored electric bulbs, and from its keystone towered a great image molded in white plaster—the figure of a woman in ancient Japanese costume. One hand held a fan; the other lifted high above her head a circular globe of light. A huge weeping-willow drooped over one side of the archway, through which came glimpses of moving colors, crowds, hanging lanterns and elfish music.
Barbara hesitated. To what did that white, female figure beckon? She looked behind her—direction now meant nothing. Perhaps she had wandered in a circle and the theater lay beyond.
She stepped through the gate.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE NIGHTLESS CITY
Straight before her lay a wide pavement, humming with voices, lined with three-story houses that glowed with iron-hooped lanterns of red, yellow and green, and tinkled with the music of samisen. From their gaily lighted shoji swathes of warm, yellow light fell on the kimono'd figures of men strolling slowly up and down. A little way off rose a square tower, with a white clock-face, illumined by a circle of electric bulbs. Narrower streets, also innocent of roadway, crossed at right angles and at mathematical intervals. They were starry with lamps that hung in long projecting balconies ornamented with grill and carved work. From these came the shrieking sounds of music and an indescribable atmosphere of frivolity, of obvious dedication to some flippant cult.