A boy was ascending the platform. He bowed and laid a box of thin unpainted wood at Daunt's feet. It contained a kakemono, or wall-painting, rolled and tied with a red-and-white cord of twisted rice-paper. Daunt read the accompanying card.
"'Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years,'" he said, "'presents her compliments to the illustrious strangers.' She is the star. The gift is a pretty custom, isn't it, even if it is advertisement. Here comes the lady herself to present her thanks for our distinguished patronage."
She bowed low before them, smiling, her small piquant face powdered white as mistletoe-berries above her carmine-painted lips. Daunt unrolled the kakemono, revealing a delicately-painted cluster of butterflies. He chatted with her in the vernacular, and she replied with much drawing-in of breath and flute-like laughter.
"She says," he translated, "that this is a picture of her honorable ancestors." A little smile, a genuflection, a breath of perfume and the powdered face and gorgeous kimono were gone. The orchestra chirruped, the curtain parted and another figure began.
Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years! As the party walked back to the waiting rick'sha, Barbara wondered what lay beneath that smiling surface. She had heard of the strenuous training that at five years began to teach the gauzy, fragile, child-butterfly to paint its wings, to flirt and sing and dance its dazzling moth-flame way. For the geisha nothing was too gorgeous, too transcendent. Her lovers might be statesmen and princes. But in return she must be always gay, always laughing, always young—all things to all men—to the end of the butterfly chapter! Butterfly hair, butterfly gown—and butterfly heart?
Barbara wondered.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DEVIL PIPES TO HIS OWN
Doctor Bersonin, huge and white-flanneled, with Phil by his side, strolled away through the swarming crowd.