n were playing unchecked, smearing their faces with rice cakes,
and squashing the flies on the window pane.

Were any of these her relatives? Asako shuddered. How much did she
actually know about these far-away cousins? She could just remember
her father. She could recall great brown shining eyes, and a thin face
wasted by the consumption which killed him, and a tenderness of voice
and manner quite apart from anything which she had ever experienced
since. This soon came to an end. After that she had known only the
conscientiously chilly care of the Muratas. They had told her that her
mother had died when she was born, and that her father was so unhappy
that he had left Japan forever. Her father was a very clever man.
He had read all the English and French and German books. He had left
special word when he was dying that Asako was not to go back to Japan,
that Japanese men were bad to women, that she was to be brought up
among French girls and was to marry a European or an American. But the
Muratas could not tell her any intimate details about her father, whom
they had not known very well. Again, although they were aware that she
had rich cousins living in Tokyo, they did not know them personally
and could tell her nothing.

Her father had left no papers, only his photograph, the picture of a
delicate, good-looking, sad-faced man in black cloak and kimono, and a
little French book called _Pensees de Pascal_, at the end of which was
written the address of Mr. Ito, the lawyer in Tokyo through whom the
dividends were paid, and that of "my cousin Fujinami Gentaro."

CHAPTER VII

THE EMBASSY

_Tsuyu no yo no
Tsuyu no yo nagara
Sari nagara!_

While this dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world,
Yet--all the same!--

The fabric of our lives is like a piece of knitting, terribly botched
and bungled in most cases. There are stitches which are dropped,
sometimes to be swallowed up and forgotten in the superstructure,
sometimes to be picked up again after a lapse of years. These stitches
are old friendships.

The first stitch from Geoffrey's bachelor days to be worked back into
the scheme of his married life was his friendship for Reggie Forsyth,
who had been best man at his wedding and who had since then been
appointed Secretary to the Embassy at Tokyo.

Reggie had received a telegram saying that Geoffrey was coming. He was
very pleased. He had reached that stage in the progress of exile
where one is