Geoffrey was alone.
"Hello, old chap!" cried Reggie, running up and shaking his friend's big paw in his small nervous grip, "I'm so awfully glad to see you; but where's Mrs. Barrington?"
Geoffrey had not brought his wife. He explained that they had been to pay their first call on Japanese relations, and that they had been honourably out; but even so the strain had been a severe one, and Asako had retired to rest at the hotel.
"But why not come and stay here with me?" suggested Reggie. "I have got plenty of spare rooms; and there is such a gulf fixed between people who inhabit hotels and people with houses of their own. They see life from an entirely different point of view; their spirits hardly ever meet."
"Have you room for eight large boxes of dresses and kimonos, several cases of curios, a French maid, a Japanese guide, two Japanese dogs and a monkey from Singapore?"
Reggie whistled.
"No really, is it as bad as all that? I was thinking that marriage meant just one extra person. It would have been fun having you both here, and this is the only place in Tokyo fit to live in."
"It looks a comfortable little place," agreed Geoffrey. They had reached the secretary's house, and the newcomer was admiring its artistic arrangement.
"Just like your rooms in London!"
Reggie prided himself on the exclusively oriental character of his habitation, and its distinction from any other dwelling place which he had ever possessed. But then Geoffrey was only a Philistine, after all.