lish people out of
England, who move restless leisure between Paris and the Nile.

Geoffrey had resigned his commission in the army. His friends thought
that this was a mistake. For the loss of a man's career, even when it
is uncongenial to him, is a serious amputation, and entails a lesion
of spiritual blood. He had refused his father's suggestion of settling
down in a house on the Brandan estate, for Lord Brandan was an
unpleasing old gentleman, a frequenter of country bars and country
barmaids. His son wished to keep his young bride as far away as
possible from a spectacle of which he was heartily ashamed.

First of all they went to Paris, which Asako adored; for was it not
her home? But this time she made the acquaintance of a Paris unknown
to her, save by rumour, in the convent days or within the discreet
precincts of Monsieur Murata's villa. She was enchanted by the
theatres, the shops, the restaurants, the music, and the life which
danced around her. She wanted to rent an _appartement_, and to live
there for the rest of her existence.

"But the season is almost over," said her husband; "everybody will be
leaving."

Unaccustomed as yet to his freedom, he still felt constrained to do
the same as Everybody.

Before leaving Paris, they paid a visit to the Auteuil villa, which
had been Asako's home for so many years.

Murata was the manager of a big Japanese firm in Paris. He had spent
almost all his life abroad and the last twenty years of it in the
French capital, so that even in appearance, except for his short
stature and his tilted eyes, he had come to look like a Frenchman with
his beard _a l'imperiale_, and his quick bird-like gestures. His wife
was a Japanese, but she too had lost almost all traces of her native
mannerisms.

Asako Fujinami had been brought to Paris by her father, who had died
there while still a young man. He had entrusted his only child to the
care of the Muratas with instructions that she should be educated in
European ways and ideas, that she should hold no communication with
her relatives in Japan, and that eventually a white husband should be
provided for her. He had left his whole fortune in trust for her, and
the interest was forwarded regularly to M. Murata by a Tokyo lawyer,
to be used for her benefit as her guardian might deem best. This money
was to be the only tie between Asako and her native land.

To cut off a child from its family, of which by virtue of vested
interes