A hundred questions clamored for explanations. Who was this one; what could that one be? But his companions gave him little information. They did not know these people, they said. Their tone conveyed to him that he must restrain his curiosity. It was plain that they insisted on being exclusive. They showed acquaintance with only one or two other groups, a party, much like their own, in which young Watanabe, son of the shipping magnate, was the leader; another composed of the sons and daughters of wealthy silk merchants from Yokohama. These, quite evidently, formed a set aside, remote from the gay throng about them.
He had indicated a girl who had passed them in the dance, rather full-figured, Eurasian apparently, with large, languid eyes, who moved with a slow swaying grace before them. It was the sense of dreamlike voluptuousness that had attracted him.
"Eurasian. I hear she is a moving-picture actress," answered Kikuchi. "It is democratic, you see. There are all kinds here, girls of gentle birth and geishas, stenographers and actresses. It is queer to have that kind of thing here in Japan, don't you think? Our girls couldn't come into such mixed company abroad, you know. But we must dance, and there are only these places, this and a few smaller ones in Tokyo; and the management is strict; in fact, I believe they pretend to keep out the geisha element, though I'm sure they wink at their coming so long as they behave themselves. It is really entirely respectable, and our girls are quite all right here so long as we keep to ourselves."
Kent took the hint. He would have liked to have mingled at close range with the others, to venture into the tangle of dazzling, mysterious femininity where your partner of chance might turn out to be a demoiselle of ancient samurai lineage or a motion-picture queen, a stenographer or a geisha. Still, he enjoyed his growing intimacy with the girls in his own party. The fact that they were confined mainly to their own circle brought them together, made it necessary to dance more often with his companions than would otherwise have been the case. He found special pleasure in Kimiko-san. It was his first experience in dancing with a girl in kimono. He enjoyed the strange sense of grasping about the thick, stiff obi; it was something new. He was surprised at her agile vivacity. The orchestra was playing an amazing adaptation of "Zigeunerweisen," stolen almost bodily by the enterprising pseudo-composer, retaining the gipsy fire and sparkle of the original, and she seemed to radiate the electric tingle, the flushing abandon thereof, confusing with the sense of odd contrast of hot, pulsing passion contained within the feudal conventionality of her gorgeous costume.
They sat out the next dance. They were alone at their table. "Do you like to dance with me? Can I dance?" Her eyes flashed at him.
"It is marvelous. It seems so impossible that you can be so wonderful. And in zori; how do you do it?"
She laughed, delighted, looked about. Then she slipped from her small foot, clad in tabi, the mitten-like white silk covering which takes the place of a stocking, a zori, sandal-like flat footgear, held in place by cross bands. She passed it to him in the shadow of the table. "See, it is slit. We have them made especially for dancing."
It seemed almost impossible that this might be such a prosaic thing as a shoe, this dainty, small object in his hand, surfaced with figured crimson and gold brocade, like a precious work of art, with its red silk cross bands.
"It simply adds to the illusion," he told her. "Out of the mysterious Orient has come to me a gorgeous Cinderella slipper."
"Who is Cinderella?"