Straight before her lay a wide pavement, humming with voices, lined with three-story houses that glowed with iron-hooped lanterns of red, yellow and green, and tinkled with the music of samisen. From their gaily lighted shoji swathes of warm, yellow light fell on the kimono'd figures of men strolling slowly up and down. A little way off rose a square tower, with a white clock-face, illumined by a circle of electric bulbs. Narrower streets, also innocent of roadway, crossed at right angles and at mathematical intervals. They were starry with lamps that hung in long projecting balconies ornamented with grill and carved work. From these came the shrieking sounds of music and an indescribable atmosphere of frivolity, of obvious dedication to some flippant cult.

In and out of these side streets flowed a multitude of boys and men, in unbelted summer robes of light colors, lazily vivacious, moving on naked, clogged feet, making the air a bluish haze of cigarette smoke. In the blazing dusk they suggested the populace of some crowded Spa strolling to the pools in flowing bath-robes and straw hats. On some of the far balconies Barbara could see women leaning, in ornate costumes, smoking tiny pipes. Here and there girls strolled past her, for the most part in couples, gaudily clad, their cheeks white with rice-powder, their lips carmined, their blue-black hair wonderfully coaxed and pomaded into shining wings and whorls, thrust through with many jeweled hair-pins, like slim daggers. They jested freely with the men they passed, laughing continually with low voices. In a doorway a slim girl, dressed in deep red, gleefully tickled with one bare foot the hide of a shaggy poodle vainly essaying slumber. As she went on, the crowd became more numerous; men's kimono brushed Barbara's skirts and eyes stared at her with contemplative boldness.

"Madame!"

She felt a hand pluck her sleeve. It was a young Japanese, in foreign dress, with a shining brown derby, shining aureated teeth, and shining silver-handled cane. "Madame wishes a guide?" he inquired. She recollected him instantly as the youth who had slipped into her hand the printed card when she had landed from the ship at Yokohama. She did not know the name of the theater she had left, however, so shook her head and hurried on.

Without warning she emerged into the nun-like quiet of a park with an acre of growing trees and an irregular little lake that lay dark and still under the moon. Beside it was a stretch of hard, beaten earth, seemingly a playground. Benches were set under the trees, and among them moved or sat other girls in costumes like those she had seen on the pavement. At sight of Barbara's foreign dress some of them giggled with amusement and called to one another in repressed, laughing voices. A bell struck somewhere, and, as though this had been a signal, they all rose and departed, passing out by the way Barbara had come.

She traversed the park—to come face to face with a high palisade. She took a new direction, only to come again on the same barrier. The park seemed only a part of a vast inclosure into which she had penetrated. Had this no outlet save the gate at which she had entered? Wondering, she retraced her steps to the lighted pavement. She was puzzled now, and turned into one of the cross streets. Its blaze of light, its movement and murmur of humanity bewildered her for a moment; then what she saw instantly arrested her.

The lower stories of most of the abutting buildings had for fronts only lattices of vertical wooden bars, set a few inches apart. Inside these bars, which made strange, human bird-cages, seated on mats of brocade, or flitting here and there, were galaxies of Japanese girls, marvelously habited in chameleon colors—even more brilliant than the geisha she had seen at Mukojima—like branches of iridescent humming-birds or banks of pulsing butterflies. Here and there, a foil to the fluttering cages, stretched a silent arcade brilliantly lighted and hung with women's photographs. Above each was fixed a placard with a name in Japanese characters.

What was this place into which she had strayed? She had heard of the famous "Street-of-the-Geisha," where the dancers live. Had she stumbled on this in the throes of some festival? Why were there no women on the pavements? She had seen none save those in the gaudy robes whom the bell had called away. What was the meaning of the high palisades?—the narrow gate with its stolid policemen?—the barred house fronts?

Projecting on to the pavement, at the side of each building, was a small, windowed kiosk like the box-office of a theater. In the one nearest Barbara a man was sitting. His arm was thrust through the window, and his hand, holding a half-opened fan, tapped carelessly on its side while he chanted in a coaxing voice. Inside a man with close-cropped gray hair strode along the seated rows, striking sharply together flint and steel, till a shower of gleaming sparks fell on each head-dress. This done, he emerged and paced three times up and down the pavement, making squeaking noises with his lips, and describing with his hands strange passes in the air. These reminded Barbara irresistibly of a child's cryptic gestures for luck. He then struck the flat of his hand six times smartly against the door-post and retired. She noticed that he paused at the entrance to snuff the row of candles that burned in a shrine beside it.

The whole street, with its rows of gilded cages was a gleaming vista of tableaux-vivants, drenched in prismatic hues. Each, Barbara noted, had its uniform scheme of costume: one showed the sweeping lines and deep, flowing sleeves of the pre-Meiji era; another the high, garnet skirt of the modern school-girl; in one the kimono were of rich mauve, shading at the bottom to pale pink set with languorous red peonies; in another, of gray crepe figured with craggy pine-trees; in a third, of scarlet and blue, woven with gold thread and embroidered in peacock feathers. Before each inmate's cushion sat a tiny brass hibachi, or fire-bowl, in whose ashes glowed a live coal for the lighting of pipes and cigarettes, and a miniature toilet-table, like a doll's-cabinet, topped by a small, round mirror. From tiny compartments now and then one would draw a little box of rouge, a powder-puff of down, or an ivory spicula, with which, in complete indifference to observation, she would heighten the vivid red of a lip, or smooth a refractory hair. The background against which they posed was of heavy and exquisitely intricate gold-lacquer carvings of stork, dragon and phoenix, of cunningly disposed mirrors, or of draped crimson and silver weaves. Before the bars men paused to chat a moment and pass on: behind them the gorgeous robes and tinted faces flitted hither and thither with a magpie chatter, with glimpses of ringed fingers clutching the lattice, and of naked feet, slim and brown against the flooring.

Barbara watched curiously. She was no longer conscious that passing men studied her furtively—that here and there, through the slender bars, a delicate hand waved daringly to her. In all the fairy-like gorgeousness she felt a subtle sense of repugnance that kept her feet in the middle of the pavement. She noted now that, however the costumes varied, they agreed in one particular: the obi of each inmate was tied, not at the back, but in front. It seemed a kind of badge. Somewhere she had read what it stood for. What was it?

A group of men passed her at the moment—foreigners, speaking an unfamiliar tongue. They talked loudly and pointed with their sticks. One of them observed her, and turning, said something to his companions. They looked back. One of them laughed coarsely.

At the sound, which echoed a patent vulgarity in the allusion, the blood flew to her cheeks. The tone had told her in a flash what the palisades, the barred inclosures, the gaudy finery and reversed obi had failed to suggest. A veil was wound about her hat and with nervous haste she drew down its folds over her face, feeling suddenly sick and hot. Driven now by an overpowering desire to find her way out, she doubled desperately back to the wider street.

"Madame!"

She turned, with relief this time, to see "Mr. Y. Nakajima," the guide, of the gold fillings and silver-topped cane.

"You are lost," he said. "Come with me, and I will find you."

She bade him take her to the gate as quickly as possible and followed him rapidly, stung with an acute longing for the noisy roadway with its careening rick'sha. He was a thin, humorous-looking youth with a chocolate skin and long almond eyes, from which he shot at Barbara glances half obsequious, half impertinent and preternaturally sly, from time to time making some remark which she answered as shortly as she might.

By the arch with its lofty female figure, under the weeping willow, Barbara turned for an instant and looked back. The street seemed to her a maze of reeling lights—a blur of painted lips and drowsing eyes and ghostly sobbing of the samisen. Just outside the gate a pilgrim-priest, his coffin-like shrine strapped on his back, was mumbling a prayer.

The guide spoke complacently: "Japan Yoshiwara are very famed," he said. "I think other countries is very seldom to have got."

"Where do they all come from?" Barbara asked suddenly. "How do they come to be here?"

"From many village," he answered. He had raised his voice, for several passers-by had paused to listen inquisitively to the strange sounds, so uncouthly unlike their own liquid syllabary; and he loved to display his English. "A man have a shop. Business become bad; he owe so plenty money. He can not pay, but he have pretty daughter. Here they offer maybe two, three hundred yen, for one year. So she dutifully pay honorable father debt."

Barbara turned away. Again she felt the edge of mystery, bred of the unguessable divergence between the moral Shibboleths of West and East. It caught at her like the cool touch of dread that chills the strayer in haunted places. In a hundred ways this land drew her with an extraordinary attraction; now a feeling of baffled perplexity and pain mingled with the fascination. It was almost a sort of terror. If in two days Japan offered such passionate variety, such undreamed contrasts and subtleties, what would it eventually show to her? Could she ever really know it, understand it?

"There is a theater near here where Sada Gozen is playing," she said. "Can you take me there?"

He nodded. "The Raimon-za—the Play-House-of-the-Gate-of-Thunder. It is more five minutes of distant."

He conducted her through a maze of narrow streets and pointed to the building, which she saw with a breath of relief. Taking out her purse she put a bill into his hand. "Thank you," she said, "and good night."

"I shall go with Madame at her hotel."

She shook her head. "I can find my way now."

"But Madame—"

"No," she said decidedly.

He stood a moment swinging his cane, looking after her with impudent almond eyes. Then he lighted a cigarette, settled his derby at a jaunty angle and sauntered back toward the Yoshiwara.

Barbara came on Daunt in the middle of the block. He had stationed himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser stature of the native crowds. With him was a Japanese boy who, she noted with surprise, was Ito, one of the house-servants. Her heart jumped as she saw the relief spring to Daunt's anxious face.

"Mea culpa!" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her hand to him. "What a trouble I have been to you! I was actually lost. Isn't it absurd?"

Her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. All his heart had leaped to meet them. In the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but since then it had been given him partly to understand. His thoughtless words—blunderer that he was!—had seemed to carp at her like a whining school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! Yet to his memory even her hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were golden, and Tokyo once more fairy-land.

"What will the others say!" she said. "They will have missed us long ago."

"We will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. We can get rick'sha at the next stand."

"What did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you found I had vanished into thin air?"

"I imagined for a while you were punishing me. Then I guessed you had somehow turned into the side street. But I felt that you would find your way back, so—I waited."

"Thank you," she said softly. "I have not acted so badly since I was a child. Are you going to shrive me?"

"I am the one to ask that of you," he replied.

"No—no! It is I. I must do penance. What is it to be?"

He looked at her steadily; his eyes shone with dark fire. In the pause she felt her heart throb quickly, and she laughed with a sweet unsteadiness. "I am glad you are going to give me none," she said.

"But I do," he answered, "I shall. I—"

The boy Ito, behind them, spoke his name. Daunt started with a stab of recollection and drew from his pocket a folded pink paper, fastened with a blue seal.

"How stupid of me! My wits have gone wool-gathering to-night. Here is a telegram for you. It came soon after we left the Embassy, and Mrs. Dandridge, thinking it might be urgent, sent Ito after us to the tea-house. He missed us, but saw me here on his way back."

Barbara broke the seal and held the message to the candle-light that shone from a low temple entrance. She did not notice at the moment that it was the temple of the Fox-God whose alms she had that evening denied. She had guessed who was the sender and the knowledge fell like a cool, fateful hand on her mood.

And alas, on Daunt's also. For, as she turned the leaf, his gaze, wandering through the temple doorway, to the candle-starred mirror above the tithe-box, had unwittingly seen reflected there, in the painfully exact chirography of a Japanese telegraph-clerk, the signature