inordinately happy to see any old friend. In fact, he
was beginning to be "fed up" with Japan, with its very limited
distractions, and with the monotony of his diplomatic colleagues.

Instead of going to the tennis court, which was his usual afternoon
occupation, he had spent the time in arranging his rooms, shifting
the furniture, rehanging the pictures, paying especial care to the
disposition of his Oriental curios, his recent purchases, his last
enthusiasms in this land of languor. Reggie collected Buddhas, Chinese
snuff-bottles and lacquered medicine cases--called _inro_ in Japanese.

"Caviare to the general!" murmured Reggie, as he gloated over a
chaste design of fishes in mother-of-pearl, a pseudo-Korin. "Poor old
Geoffrey! He's only a barbarian; but perhaps she will be interested.
Here, T[=o]!" he called out to an impassive Japanese man-servant, "have
the flowers come yet, and the little trees?"

T[=o] produced from the back regions of the house a quantity of dwarf
trees, planted as miniature landscapes in shallow porcelain dishes,
and big fronds of budding cherry blossom.

Reggie arranged the blossom in a triumphal arch over the corner table,
where stood the silent company of the Buddhas. From among the trees
he chose his favourite, a kind of dwarf cedar, to place between the
window, opening on to a sunny veranda, and an old gold screen, across
whose tender glory wound the variegated comicality of an Emperor's
traveling procession, painted by a Kano artist of three centuries ago.

He removed the books which were lying about the room--grim Japanese
grammars, and forbidding works on International Law; and in
their place he left volumes of poetry and memoirs, and English
picture-papers strewn about in artistic disorder. Then he gave the
silver frames of his photographs to To to be polished, the photographs
of fair women signed with Christian names, of diplomats in grand
uniforms, and of handsome foreigners.

Having reduced the serious atmosphere of his study so as to give an
impression of amiable indolence, Reggie Forsyth lit a cigarette and
strolled out into the garden, amused at his own impatience. In London
he would never have bestirred himself for old Geoffrey Barrington, who
was only a Philistine, after all, with no sense of the inwardness of
things.

Reggie was a slim and graceful young man, with thin fair hair brushed
flat back from his forehead. A certain projection of bones under the
face gave him