w how to make. Then below the gramophone began.
Davidson started nervously when he heard it, but said nothing. Men's
voices floated up. Miss Thompson's guests were joining in a well-known
song and presently they heard her voice too, hoarse and loud. There was
a good deal of shouting and laughing. The four people upstairs, trying
to make conversation, listened despite themselves to the clink of
glasses and the scrape of chairs. More people had evidently come. Miss
Thompson was giving a party.

"I wonder how she gets them all in," said Mrs Macphail, suddenly
breaking into a medical conversation between the missionary and her
husband.

It showed whither her thoughts were wandering. The twitch of Davidson's
face proved that, though he spoke of scientific things, his mind was
busy in the same direction. Suddenly, while the doctor was giving some
experience of practice on the Flanders front, rather prosily, he sprang
to his feet with a cry.

"What's the matter, Alfred?" asked Mrs Davidson.

"Of course! It never occurred to me. She's out of Iwelei."

"She can't be."

"She came on board at Honolulu. It's obvious. And she's carrying on her
trade here. Here."

He uttered the last word with a passion of indignation.

"What's Iwelei?" asked Mrs Macphail.

He turned his gloomy eyes on her and his voice trembled with horror.

"The plague spot of Honolulu. The Red Light district. It was a blot on
our civilisation."

Iwelei was on the edge of the city. You went down side streets by the
harbour, in the darkness, across a rickety bridge, till you came to a
deserted road, all ruts and holes, and then suddenly you came out into
the light. There was parking room for motors on each side of the road,
and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its
mechanical piano, and there were barbers' shops and tobacconists. There
was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a
narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided
Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There
were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly painted in green, and the
pathway between them was broad and straight. It was laid out like a
garden-city. In its respectable regularity, its order and spruceness, it
gave an impression of sardonic horror; for never can the search for love
have been so systematised and ordered. The pathways were lit by a rare
lamp, but they would have been d