and in that lovely old
park! I hope it was moonlight. Do you suppose they sat under the
wistaria?"

Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there
had come before my mind a picture very like that. Such a picture in the
Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted
out from mind and reality the better for all concerned. I spoke
positively to my companion.

"Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn't for breaking a commandment I would
call you foolish with one syllable. Don't you know that in this country
a young man and woman walking and talking together cannot be permitted?
Neither love nor romance is free or permissible, but they are governed
by laws which, if transgressed, will break heart and spirit."

"So I have heard," cooed Miss Gray, unimpressed by my statements.
"Wouldn't it be sweet, though, for you and me to go about teaching these
dear Japanese people that young love will have its freedom and make a
custom of its own?"

"Yes, indeed! Wouldn't it be a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged
women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for
young love--subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray
novel or so!" I said all this and a little more.

Jane went on unheeding, "That's it. We must preach love and live it
till we have made convicts of every inhabitant."

Of course she meant "converts," but the kinks in Miss Gray's tongue were
as startling as the peculiar twists in her religion.

Upon her asking for more particulars I repeated what Kishimoto San had
told me. The girl's father was an artist by profession and, as nearly as
I could judge, a rover by habit. Of late the family had lived in a
western city. I was not familiar with the name Kishimoto San gave; he
called it "Shaal."

"Oh," cried my companion, "I know. I lived there once. It's Seattle."

Occasionally there shot through Jane's mind a real thought, as luminous
as a shaft of light through a jar of honey. I would have never guessed
the name of that city.

"Then what else happened?" she continued, as eagerly as a young girl
hearing a love story.

I told her it had not happened yet, and before it did I was going to
call at the house and see the girl as I had promised and settle upon the
hour she was to come for daily lessons. Meantime Jane was to take her
nap, her milk, and her tonic without my standing over her. In her
devotion to her profession she was apt to forget t