"I suppose it's the photographs which look like old times," Geoffrey went on. "How's little Véronique?"
"Veronica married an Argentine beef magnate, a German Jew, the nastiest person I have ever avoided meeting."
"Poor old Reggie! Was that why you came to Japan?"
"Partly; and partly because I had a chief in the Foreign Office who dared to say that I was lacking in practical experience of diplomacy. He sent me to this comic country to find it."
"And you have found it right enough," said Geoffrey, inspecting a photograph of a Japanese girl in her dark silk kimono with a dainty flower pattern round the skirts and at the fall of the long sleeves. She was not unlike Asako; only there was a fraction of an inch more of bridge to her nose, and in that fraction lay the secret of her birth.
"That is my latest inspiration," said Reggie. "Listen!"
He sat down at the piano and played a plaintive little air, small and sweet and shivering.
"Japonaiserie d'hiver," he explained.
Then he changed the burden of his song into a melody rapid and winding, with curious tricklings among the bass notes.
"Lamia," said Reggie, "or Lilith."