"There's no tune in that last one; you can't whistle it," said Geoffrey, who exaggerated his Philistinism to throw Reggie's artistic nature into stronger relief. "But what has that got to do with the lady?"
"Her name is Smith," said Reggie. "I know it is almost impossible and terribly sad; but her other name is Yaé. Rather wild and savage—isn't it? Like the cry of a bird in the night-time, or of a cannibal tribe on the warpath."
"And is this your oriental version of Véronique?" asked his friend.
"No," said Reggie, "it is a different chapter of experience altogether. Perhaps old Hardwick was right. I still have much to learn, thank God. Véronique was personal; Yaé is symbolic. She is my model, just like a painter's model, only more platonic. She is the East to me; for I cannot understand the East pure and undiluted. She is a country-woman of mine on her father's side, and therefore easier to understand. Impersonality and fatalism, the Eastern Proteus, in the grip of self-insistence and idealism, the British Hercules. A butterfly body with this cosmic war shaking it incessantly. Poor child! no wonder she seems always tired."
"She is a half-caste?" asked Geoffrey.
"Bad word, bad word. She isn't half-anything; and caste suggests India and suttees. She is a Eurasian, a denizen of a dream country which has a melodious name and no geographical existence. Have you ever heard anybody ask where Eurasia was? I have. A traveling Member of Parliament's wife at the Embassy here only a few months ago. I said that it was a large undiscovered country lying between the Equator and Tierra del Fuego. She seemed quite satisfied, and wondered whether it was very hot there; she remembered having heard a missionary once complain that the Eurasians wore so very few clothes! But to return to Yaé, you must meet her. This evening? No? To-morrow then. You will like her because, she looks something like Asako; and she will adore you because you are utterly unlike me. She comes here to inspire me once or twice a week. She says she likes me because everything in my house smells so sweet. That is the beginning of love, I sometimes think. Love enters the soul through the nostrils. If you doubt me, observe the animals. But foreign houses in Japan are haunted by a smell of dust and mildew. You cannot love in them. She likes to lie on my sofa, and smoke cigarettes, and do nothing, and listen to my playing tunes about her."
"You are very impressionable," said his friend. "If it were anybody else I should say you were in love with this girl."
"I am still the same, Geoffrey; always in love—and never."
"But what about the other people here?" Barrington asked.
"There are none, none who count. I am not impressionable. I am just short-sighted. I have to focus my weak vision on one person and neglect the rest."