ng
for pictures in the golden atmosphere, for joy in the golden days and
nights.

My sketch-book was full of ideas and jottings, and I looked forward
much to the landing at Sitka where I hoped to find new and good
material. The hopeless ugliness of the Alaskan natives had so far
appalled me. An artist chiefly of the face and figure, as I was, could
not hope to find a model amongst them. As our steamer had come up the
coast I had looked in vain for even a decent-sized woman or child
amongst them. They seem a race without a single beauty, possessing
neither stature, nor colour, nor length of hair, nor even plump
shapeliness. Undersized, leather-skinned, small-eyed, thin, and
wizened, they never seem to be young. They seem to start middle-aged
and go on growing older.

No, I had really had no luck at present on my Alaskan tour, but I was
naturally sanguine and hoped still something from Sitka.

Most capitals give you something if you visit them, and Sitka was the
capital of Alaska.

As I lay in my berth that night, made wakeful by the bright light, I
was thinking over past incidents in my life and all the Minnies and
Marys that had been connected with them. They seemed all to have been
Mary or Minnie with Marias in Italy and France. I fell asleep at last,
hoping whatever Fate had in store for me at Sitka, it wouldn't be a
Mary or a Minnie, but some new name embodying a new idea.

CHAPTER II

THE TEA-SHOP

When we landed at Sitka I went ashore with a fellow passenger. He was
a clever man, and had made trips up there already for the sake of
taking photographs of the people and the scenery; he knew Sitka well
and came up to me just before we arrived there with the remark:

"If you come with me I'll take you to have tea with the prettiest girl
you've ever seen."

This certainly seemed an invitation to accept, and I did so on the
spot.

"She really is," he continued, observing my sceptically raised
eyebrows, "wonderfully pretty. She keeps a tea-shop and she is
Chinese." With that he bolted into his own cabin, which was next mine,
and as I heard him laughing, I concluded he was joking and thought no
more about it. However, as the ship glided up over flat sheets of
golden water to the landing-stage, he joined me again, and together we
stood looking up the principal street of Sitka which runs down to meet
the little quay.

It was just four in the afternoon, and everything was vivid living
gold, as the floo