ng was gone from the friendship. He was
sore at heart, more than ever alone.... The two separated a second time
in Peking after the relief of the Legations. Bedient went to Japan,
where he made the acquaintance of an old Buddhist priest--a scabby,
long-nailed Zarathustra who roamed the boxwood hills above Nikko, and
meditated.

Bedient was farther from such things now, but he could not avoid noting
that Japan is an old and easy shoe for the passions. The women of Japan
are but finished children, preserving a sense of innocence in their
bestowals. Many little Adelaides in fragrance, without will, without
high hopes, only momentary and baby hopes--children happy in the little
happinesses they give and take. This is the extraordinary feature of an
empire of dangerous half-grown men. Moreover, above the delicate charm
of sex, these little creatures are so remote and primitive in race and
idea, so intrinsically foreign and undeveloped--that one leaves the
fairest with a mitigated pang...

Bedient never repeated an action which once had brought home to him the
sense of his own evil. The emotions here narrated are but moments in
years. He accounted them quite as legitimate in the abstract as the
strange visionings of his higher life, as yet untold. These latter have
to do with his maturity, as wars and passions have to do with the
approach to maturity in the life of men. To Bedient, evil concerned
itself with the unclean. Wherever uncleanness (to him a pure
destructive principle) revealed itself there was a balance of power in
his nature which turned him from it, despite any concomitant
attraction. The original Adelaide was a superb answer to the more
earthy of his three natures; so utterly confined to her one plane as to
be innocent of others. In the two Manila twilights which saw the
dominance of his physical being, it was the Adelaide element which
roused; and the scars they left behind marked the scorch of memories.

The fact that there were moments in which Bedient smoldered helplessly
in a world of possible women is significant in the character of one
destined to fare forth on the Supreme Adventure. It is true, he was
preserved in comparative purity though he roamed unbridled around the
world. Perhaps it was the same instinct which held him apart from men
in their lower moments of indulgence. He could linger where there was
wine until the dregs of the company were stirred by the stimulus. All
delight left him then, an