"Where have you been?" she asked, "You said you would only be half an hour."
"I met Wigram," said Geoffrey, "and I went with him to see some geisha dancing."
"You might have taken me. Was it very pretty?"
"No, it was very ugly; you would not have cared for it at all."
He had a hot bath, before he lay down by her side.
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS JAPAN
Momo-shiki no
Omiya-bito wa
Okaredo
Kokoro ni norite
Omoyuru imo!
Though the people of the
Great City
With its hundred towers
Be many,
Riding on my heart—
(Only) my beloved Sister!
The traveller in Japan is restricted to a hard-worn road, dictated to him by Messrs. Thos. Cook and Son, and by the Tourists' Information Bureau. This via sacra is marked by European-style hotels of varying quality, by insidious curio-shops, and by native guides, serious and profane, who classify foreigners under the two headings of Temples and Tea-houses. The lonely men-travellers are naturally supposed to have a penchant for the spurious geisha, who haunt the native restaurants; the married couples are taken to the temples, and to those merchants of antiquities, who offer the highest commission to the guides. There is always an air of petty conspiracy in the wake of every foreigner who visits the country. If he is a Japan enthusiast, he is amused by the naive ways, and accepts the conventional smile as the reflection of the heart of "the happy, little Japs." If he hates the country, he takes it for granted that extortion and villainy will accompany his steps.