mill. In a few years she'll pass out of it, marry, and forget all about

it. But, of course, there must be others, girls who are fine-souled enough to suffer from the constant degradation that is offered them day after day, every day. The whole damned thing ought to be abolished."

"Yes, that's one side of it," said Kittrick. "Sometimes I'm inclined to agree with you; but then again, at other times I'm not. It's the old question of regulation or no regulation, and it is still an open one. At home we have taken the other tack, but I wonder if we're much better off. You know San Francisco, where you may go out any night and pick up girls, just like these, not held in such bondage perhaps, but, on the other hand, furtive, frightened poor devils who are no better off, who have not even the sense of security that the girls have here. We hear of Piccadilly and Leicester Square. The trouble is that as long as men, or at least a great many men, are what they are, women will be sacrificed. The question is the same here as elsewhere; there's something to be said on both sides. It's rotten either way. I've never been able quite to make up my mind which is best, or worst. But, here in Japan, there is at least one thing in their favor, and that's the marvelous way in which the Japanese manage to place a veneer of artistry, of beauty, externally anyway, over this thing. Of course, we have our opulently gorgeous palaces of sin and all that but they seem flaunting and garish when compared with Japan, where even in this they manage to convey a surface of estheticism, delicate beauty, cleanness, with their spotless rooms, fairy gardens and the rest. It is reflected even in these girls who seldom show the loose sensuousness, the brazen, commercial harlotry of our women of that class. And one thing is certain, these girls here in the case of the lower classes, and the geisha in that of the more well-to-do, have served to preserve the purity of the Japanese married woman. It's the existence of the Yoshiwara and the _machiai_ that turns the Japanese philanderer away from the other man's wife. And seeing the tangles and triangles of our cities, the rotten divorce cases, and knowing that the Japanese family, the unsullied virtue of the matron, is the corner-stone of the Japanese Empire, I'm hanged if I can't at least understand the reluctance of the Japanese in tackling this matter, disgusting and tragic as it is."

It was after midnight when he reached the house, but Jun-san was waiting for him. She never retired to her own little house in the garden until the men were safely home.

"You are late, Kent-san." She smiled, stepped closer, peered at him. "Ah, so you have found one at last. The other night it was a rose, and now---- So she is Japanese." The smile left her face. "Kent-san," she took his hand in her earnestness, "Kent-san, it is so seldom that happiness comes from this, a foreign man and a Japanese girl, but, if you must go on, be kind to her, please."

She slipped away. He shivered a little. Poor girl; it was distressing, this air of tragedy which always seemed to cling like a shadow to this beautiful, lovable woman, uncomplaining, with her soft dark eyes. He could envy Karsten to have the love of a woman like that. He felt lonely. Life was drab, tedious, selfish. Would he ever gain such love from some woman. So Jun-san thought he was traveling on that road. The rose, yes, but what could she have seen to-night? Women were always like that, even Jun-san, ever imagining.

He went to his room, began to undress. A glimpse in the mirror made him look more closely,--a white smudge on his cheek. Ah, that was it, a smear of _o shiroi_, powder from the cheek of the Yoshiwara girl. He wiped it away hurriedly. Damn it, if he should enter into love relations with some Japanese girl, it would not be one like that. The thought of Adachi-san came to him. Yes, a girl such as she; still, his mind insisted, this was not the sort of relation he wished to enter into with her. And if, after all, he did, what would come of it, how would it end? He thought of Jun-san's words, "so seldom happiness comes from this." How devilishly complicated life was, a Scylla or Charybdis; did one steer clear of one rock one banged into the other. He turned off the light impatiently and climbed into bed, but thoughts would not leave him, the oppressive, stifling atmosphere of sorrow which lay broodingly over the household--why could not happiness come from a relationship like this?