The voice of a woman cut in; her hair, dressed high, with a great, heavily oiled knot, proclaimed that she was married. "I don't like it. It's dirty."
A girl sitting next to Kent laughed. She had noticed that he had caught the remark. "Funny, isn't it?" she remarked to him. He aroused himself from his thoughts. He had not noticed her. It was the priestess. She chatted on. He had not been introduced, but, would she dance? Why, certainly; he was a friend of Dick's. So he found himself in the midst of the whirl, enjoying the thought that he, himself, had now become part of this bewildering inconsistency, fox-trotting with a Buddhist priestess, absurd, amusing, but delectable. She danced with full-bodied enjoyment, chatting vivaciously, with a nimble, flash-like wit. When they had returned to their seats, he led her to tell him about the others. She knew them well, as did Dick, but he enjoyed her characterizations, the Japanese point of view.
The full-figured Eurasian girl, whose dreamy voluptuosity had attracted his attention the first night, when he had been with the Suzuki girls, passed in the dance, nodded over her partner's shoulder to the priestess.
"Do you know that girl? I hear she is a motion-picture actress?"
"Naruhodo," she was noncommittal. "Yes, I see her often here. I have spoken to her."
"Then introduce me, please. I know so few people here."
She hesitated for a moment, overcame her doubts. "All right, come."
The dance had finished. The girl was sitting at one of the large tables, with two or three other girls and some young foreigners. He hesitated in his turn. It was a bit awkward. Still, the die had been cast. He must see it through. The priestess laid her hand on his sleeve. "This is Mr. Kent. He wants to meet you."
The girl nodded to him slightly, looking at him, her big eyes wide in surprise. The others at the table stared. Utter silence. He wished he were a hundred miles away. But he was in for it. "Please, Miss ——" Hang it, the priestess had not even given her name. He slid over it. "I am quite strange here. I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me a dance?"
"I am sorry. My dances are all taken." The others still stared. He bowed. The priestess was already in retreat. He trailed after her, to the corner of the lady tyrant. Damn it. He bit his lip in resentment. Who was she, this Eurasian, to hold herself too high, too precious, as if he were not good enough for her? Still, of course, the girl was right. What a fool he was immediately to think of race, when he had always insisted, did, in fact, maintain that he had no race prejudice. Good for her, whoever she might be. But he had been an ass. He had made a bad beginning.