David found Dulcie gazing out at a carved and filigreed pavilion which seemed to have drifted down softly upon the lake, where it rested in a fringe of bright green water plants.
“I couldn’t bear very much of this,” she said soberly. “It is too beautiful. It won’t let me be myself at all. I like to be good, but I couldn’t keep on being as good as I am this minute. I couldn’t stand it. You know, David, the beautiful places at home shout at you, like an organ or a big chorus. This whispers and murmurs. You have to stop and listen to it, and when you do that, it gets you.”
“Come over here and break the spell,” laughed David. “They are serving American ice cream in the gaudy silk tents beyond that hedge.”
The dinner that night was given by the city of Tokio. Mr. Hammond promised to send David back to the hotel for Dulcie when it was over, so that she might see the dancing in the Tea House of a Thousand Flowers.
There was no formal placing at this dinner. Many of the Japanese spoke English, and David, to his great joy, found the youngest reporter seated at his left, with the star reporter just across the table. The tables were placed around the walls of the large room, with a space in the middle.
“What’s all that floor space for?” asked the youngest reporter, who was occasionally known as Fred. “Do you suppose the Geishas are going to dance here? It gums my works if they are, because I simply gotter have that Tea House of a Thousand Flowers for local color. Gosh, isn’t this great?”
“When you have been a correspondent as long as I have,” the star reporter cut in, “you won’t need local color. You will carry your own paints. I could write up that Tea House of a Thousand Flowers right now so you could actually smell it. But they won’t have the Geishas here.”
“I heard they are going to give some heavy stuff between courses,” said David. “Historical, and all that. Hope they do. I want to see something good. Why can’t they give us a devil-dance, or something?”
“Cling to your lingerie,” advised the star. “If I mistake not, you will see the real thing tonight. Something to make the Geishas look like a row of sparrows hunting crumbs on a park bench.”
The first course came on, and David fell to, softly voicing the hope that he might be spared to go home once more. At the close, while the plates were changed, soft queer music was played on strange instruments, the like of which David had never seen.