Chapter 9 IN 'FRISCO

During the voyage to New York and the subsequent journey across

America to San Francisco I was very wretched.

The mystery of Viola's disappearance and her flight from me stood before my mind perpetually, worrying and harassing it. I felt no joyful anticipation of reaching 'Frisco and meeting Suzee, though I recognised in a dull way that some sort of distraction and companionship would be the best thing to stop this incessant pondering on the same subject. I slept little at night, and in the short intervals of rest such vivid dreams of Viola would come to me, that awakening in the morning brought a fresh anguish of despair and disappointment with it each day.

This sort of thing could not go on, I must let her "lie asleep in my subconsciousness for a year," as she put it in her letter-for to forget her was impossible-or my reason would go down under the strain.

When I arrived in San Francisco, it was one of those strange days when the sea-fog comes in to visit the town. It rolled in great thick billows down the streets from the sand dunes, obscuring everything, damping everything, filling the air with the salt scent of the open sea.

I went to one of the big hotels, and they gave me a bedroom and sitting-room to myself: the rooms were adjoining and comfortable, but oh! what a blankness fell upon me as I sat down in one of the chairs and the bell-boy, having deposited a jug of iced water on the table, shut the door. I had been so much with Viola that it seemed strange to me now, hard to realise that I was alone. How many rooms such as these, she and I had come into, shared together, and how bright and gay her companionship had always been, how she had always laughed at the discomforts or the difficulties of our travels! Surely we had been made for each other! What strange wave of life was this that had broken us apart? I looked towards my bedroom, dull and cheerless and empty. From the open window the warm, wet, yellow fog was streaming in its soft wreaths through both rooms. The roar from the stone-paved streets, crowded with incessant traffic, came up to me muffled through the fog.

After a time I rose, closed the windows, unpacked my things, and changed my clothes. Then I went down at six to dine, as I wanted a long evening. Some champagne cheered me, and as I sat in the long, crowded dining-room, alone at my small table, my heart began to beat again warmly at the thought of the new venture before me. To-night? What would it bring forth? Should I find her? The vitalising breath of excitement began to creep through me. I finished my dinner hurriedly, swallowed my black coffee at a draught, and made my way down the room and out to the hall, putting on my hat and coat as I went. I found the guide I had asked for when I first arrived at the hotel waiting for me. He asked me mysteriously if I had put away my watch and divested myself of all jewellery, and I told him impatiently I had and showed him a small revolver I always carried. When he was somewhat reassured I took the paper that Suzee had sent me out of my pocket and showed it to him.

"That's where I want to go," I said, "and if you know every hole and cranny of the place as I was told, I suppose you know that one."

The guide grinned as he read the name.

"It's the worst place in the whole town," he remarked with a sort of admiring unction. I evidently went up in his estimation as he recognised the acumen I had shewed in my choice. I was a visitor worthy of his guidance, and he was put upon his mettle.

"The police don't dare to go there, but they'll let me in day or night."

We had reached the door now and stepped into the street. The fog had had its frolic down town, it seemed and had almost disappeared, rolling off to the sand dunes and the sea whence it had come. The night was dark and fresh with the damp saltness of the shore; a few stars shone above. The shops were still open, and their huge plate-glass windows blazed with light. We walked rapidly through these streets towards the Chinese quarter where the noise and light ceased. The streets were quiet and empty and seemed very clean. The shops here were closed. The lights few. There was a fever of impatience in my veins. I felt as when one is drawing near to an unknown combat: a conflict the nature of which and ultimate result one does not know.

My rather shambling guide seemed amused at the pace at which I walked and giggled immoderately between remarks of his own which seemed to him to be appropriate to the occasion. I hardly heard him. At one moment I was lost in a bitter reflection of how many excursions and similar wanderings Viola had shared with me; at another, my mind seemed leaping eagerly forward, to seize this new joy in front of me.

"That's a joss-house, and that's a tea-house, and that's a silk merchant," remarked my guide at intervals, indicating different buildings as we passed. Some were frame houses with signs hanging out, painted in Chinese characters and with wonderful red door-posts; some had latticed windows with lights burning behind. But for the most part, from this outer point of view, Chinatown was clean, orderly, and dark.

We stopped at last before an open doorway through which we stepped and crossed a yard, hemmed in by the crowded frame buildings round it, but open to the sky. By the light of the stars we found a ladder at the farther side and ascended this as it leant against the crooked wall of a rickety and tumbledown-looking house. The ladder went as far as the second story, where there was an open square of blackness, either window or door, through which we scrambled from the swaying rungs and then found ourselves in a passage. It was very low, apparently, for I struck my head whenever I held it upright, and so narrow that our shoulders brushed the sides. It was in fact a little tunnel, reminding one of the rounded runways a rabbit makes in thick undergrowth. It was quite dark, and my guide put himself in front and took one of my hands, pulling me along after him down steps and round corners, along different twisted, corkscrew turnings, till at last a passage a little broader than the others opened before us, where a lamp was burning; he drew back against the wall, pushing me forwards, and whispering some directions in my ear.

I passed along, as I was bid, went down two small steps, and knocked at the door I found before me. The door seemed a very stout one, securely fastened, and had a small aperture, at the height of one's face from the ground. It was only about five inches square and set with thick vertical iron bars. Behind these was an iron flap now closed.

I knocked and waited. Presently the iron flap behind the bars was cautiously opened and I saw a face peering through at me. Before I could speak the iron flap was shut to with a clank.

"That's because Nanine sees you're a stranger," whispered my guide. "They're a real bad lot here, and they're precious afraid of any 'tecs getting in. Just let me pass, sir."

I drew back, and he went up and gave the most extraordinary squawk that I ever heard. It was a pretty good password to have, for I should think no stranger could imitate it. The flap flew open again, and then some conversation ensued through the bars.

"It's all right now, sir," said the guide after a minute; "you walk right in." The door was now ajar. I went forwards and pushed it; it gave way easily. I stepped inside, and it swung to behind me. Inside the light was red-scarlet. A lamp was standing somewhere at the side of the room, behind thin, red curtains. As I entered, another door at the end of the room swung to on a retreating form. Some one had gone out. The room seemed empty. It was very small, and an enormous bed took up nearly the whole of it. There seemed no window at all anywhere: the low ceiling almost touched my head. I stopped still. A very slight movement somewhere near me seemed to speak of another's presence.

"Suzee," I said under my breath.

At the sound of my voice there was a delighted cry, and the next moment a little form in scarlet drapery threw itself at my feet.

"Treevor, Treevor," came in Suzee's voice; and I bent over the little scarlet bundle, lifted her up, and pressed my lips on her hair. It smelt of roses, just as it had done in the tea-shop at Sitka, and carried me back there on the wings of its fragrance, as scents alone can do.

She clung to me in a wild fervour of emotion. I felt her little hands dutch me desperately. She kissed my arm and wrist passionately, seeming not to dare to lift her face to mine. This wild abandonment, this frenzy of hungered, starving love, what a sharp contrast to the cool, slow surrender of Viola, if surrender it could be called, that lending of the beautiful body, with total reserve of the spirit! Even in that moment of this wild lavishing of love from another, as the little breast leapt wildly against my own, a fierce pulse of jealous longing went through me as I thought of that unconquered something that she had never yielded to me.

Suzee hardly seemed to expect my caresses in return, she only seemed to wish to pour her own upon me in the wildest, most lavish excess. At last, when she grew a little calmer, I held her at arm's length from me and looked at her.

"Now, Suzee, I want you to tell me what you are doing in this awful place. How did you get here, to begin with?"

"Oh, Mister Treevor, I have had such trouble, such awful trouble, you will never believe; but when I ran-when I came to Mrs. Hackett she was very good to me, only she wanted to sell me for two hundred and fifty dollars to Chinaman. I said, 'No, I belong to rich Englishman. He send you more if you wait. He send you three hundred!' And I wrote you, you remember?"

"Yes," I answered. "Did you get the money all right that I cabled to you?"

"Oh yes, Treevor, thank you; and Nanine had it and so she was willing to keep me."

"But what have you been doing while you have been here?" I said glancing round. The whole place, with its hidden entrance, secret passages, and barred doors seemed to speak of the lowest and worst forms of vice.

"Oh, Treevor, I have been very good, so good. I would not have any visitors at all. I was so afraid you would find out and not have me if you knew, and, besides, I loved you too much." (But this was evidently an after-thought, and I noted it as such. Her true reason was given first.) "And I knew Nanine would take all my money, whatever I got. She is good to the girls here, but she takes all their money, all, they never have any. So I said to myself, 'What is the use? Besides, he will come soon and take you away.' And to Nanine I said-'Englishman will be so angry with you and with me, perhaps he will kill you or tell the police if you do not keep me for him.' And when the money came Nanine was quite pleased and said perhaps you would pay more when you came, so she did not worry me with Chinamen or any one, and I've had this room all to myself since I've been here. And I was very much afraid of you, Treevor, if I did anything at all, so I really, really have not."

I kept my eyes fixed on hers all the time she was speaking, and I felt as the words came eagerly from her lips that they were the truth. Her exquisite, untouched beauty, her ardour of passionate welcome to me helped to illustrate it.

I smiled at her.

"Well, I am quite satisfied," I said; "I believe you have been 'good,' as you call it, because you were afraid to be otherwise. I want to hear a lot more about your husband and how you came here, but I think we had better get out of this place as soon as we can. Have you any things you want to take with you?"

"Only this," she said, pointing to an odd, little, hide-covered trunk beside her. "That has my silk clothes in it and my jewellery. If you want me to come away I can come now."

I sat silent for a moment, thinking. Where should I take her? Back to my own hotel perhaps for this one night. It might be managed. It was getting late, most of the people in the hotel would be in bed when we got there. To-morrow or the next day we could start for Mexico, where I had made up my mind to go with her.

"Very well," I said aloud; "shut up your trunk and put something round you, and we'll go now."

"You will see Nanine? You will speak to her? Let me call her," said Suzee rather anxiously. And as I assented she slipped out of the room and reappeared with a fat, coarse-looking woman who grinned amiably as she saw me. She agreed to let Suzee go with me then and there for another hundred dollars, and said her little trunk should be sent downstairs and put on a cab which the guide could get for us.

While this was being done, she chatted to me, thanked me for the money I had cabled over, and hoped I was satisfied with Suzee, her appearance, and the treatment she had received. I said I was, and asked how it was the girl had come to her at all. She seemed a little confused at that, and began to explain volubly that she had had nothing to do with it. Suzee had come there one night and begged to be taken in, and as she had known some of the girl's people who had formerly lived in Chinatown, she had done so out of pure pity and charity and love of humanity.

I listened to all this with a smile, and, as I felt I was not getting the truth, did not prolong the conversation. When the guide came back and said he was ready for us I paid the one hundred dollars and wished her good-night.

She opened the outer door of the room for us, and we went down a staircase this time which eventually led us to a door in another yard from which we gained the street. The ladder way, I take it, was used chiefly as a convenient exit in case of a raid by the police. I put Suzee into the cab and jumped in myself, the guide went on the box, and we drove back to the hotel.

It needed a certain amount of moral courage to drive up to the hotel with the scarlet-clad Suzee beside me, but I think possibly artists have a larger share of that useful quality than other men. Always having been different from others since his childhood, the artist is accustomed to the gaping wonder, the ridicule as well as the admiration, the misunderstanding, of those about him, and it ceases to affect him; while viewing as he does his companions with a certain contempt, knowing them to be less gifted than himself, he sets no store by their opinion.

So I paid and dismissed my guide, also the driver, pushed open the swinging glass doors, and entered the lounge, Suzee beside me.

We were not late enough; in another hour the hall would have been deserted. As it was, the band had ceased playing, but there were numbers of men lounging about and smoking, and groups of women still sitting in the rocking-chairs under the palms.

Through the hall we went, straight to the lift, but every eye was turned upon us and I felt rather than heard the gasp of horror that our entry caused. The elevator boy almost collapsed on the ground as I motioned Suzee to go in and sit down, which she did-on the floor.

However, no actual force was used to restrain our movements, and we reached my rooms without any hindrance.

It was decidedly an improvement to have her there; the rooms looked better, more comfortable, more as my rooms were accustomed to look.

Suzee herself was extravagantly delighted, and shewed it in every look and gesture. Gay and radiant in her brilliant scarlet silk, she moved about under the electric light like a glowing animated picture.

"What will you have to eat or drink?" I asked as I saw her look curiously into the jug of iced water that adorned my table. "I'll order some supper."

"Anything, Treevor, anything you eat; I don't mind, and I never drink anything but tea. May I get out my own tea-things and make it?"

"Certainly," I answered, and I watched her interestedly as she went down on her knees before her little trunk and opened it, turning out beautiful coloured silks of all shades on to the floor.

While we were thus innocently engaged the hotel manager burst suddenly into the room. He looked very perturbed, and his face was a deep purple.

"Now, sir, will you tell me what you mean by behaving like this in a respectable hotel?"

He caught sight of Suzee sitting on the ground and started; the girl stared up at him with a look of astonishment in which I thought recognition blended.

"Come outside," I said mildly, "and take a turn in the corridor with me." And we both went out and shut the door.

I talked with him for fifteen minutes and explained it was unwise and unnecessary to make a great fuss and turn a good customer into the streets at this late hour. We were going in any case as soon as we could get off; in the mean time, the engagement of the next room to mine at seven dollars a day for Suzee would satisfy the proprieties. An artist must have models for his pictures and must put them up somewhere. Besides, I pointed out that he could put all my transgressions down at full length in the bill.

This seemed to soothe him very much, and our interview ended by his unlocking the door of the next room, turning on the lights, and saying what a fine one it was. I promised Suzee should occupy it, and told him we wanted supper and some champagne he could recommend. This completely softened him, and he left me promising to send the waiter for orders.

In a few minutes the same bell-boy appeared with another of the inevitable jugs of iced water, and a waiter came immediately after and took my orders. All this being temporarily arranged, I went back to Suzee. She had changed in that short time from her scarlet dress into one of the palest blue, the most exquisite soft tone of colour conceivable. It was all embroidered round the edge of the little jacket and the wide falling sleeves in mauve and silver, and she had twisted some mauve flowers and heavy silver ornaments into her shining hair. Her great dark eyes flashed and sparkled, the pure tint of her skin shewed the most faultless cream against the soft blue silk, her little mouth curved redly in gay smiles as she looked at me for admiration.

I was sad and heart-sick really in my inner self, but the senses count for much in this life and they were pleased and told me I had done well.

"I am quite, quite happy, Treevor," she said, as I told her she was beautiful, a vision to dazzle one. "Now see me make tea. All Chinese make it this way."

On a little side table she had rigged up a sort of spirit stand, and on this a kettle steamed merrily. Set out on the table was a queer little silver box of tea and four delicate, transparent cups or basins, for they had no handles, of the most fairy-like egg-shell china, each standing in a shell-like saucer.

"Where is your teapot?" I asked, coming up to the table and putting my hand on the blue silk-clad shoulder.

"Chinese never have teapot. That's all an English mistake. Chinese always make tea in a cup."

She took as she spoke a pinch of tea between her tiny fingers and dropped it into one of the cups, immediately filling it up with boiling water. Then she took the saucer from underneath and set it on the top, its rim exactly enclosed the edge of the cup. Raising the saucer a trifle at one side, she poured the infusion into one of the other little bowls, keeping her finger on the saucer to hold it in place. The tea leaves, kept back by the saucer, remained in the first cup. The tea, a clear, pale-amber liquid, filled the second.

"Now it is ready to drink," she said, lifting the tiny egg-shell bowl and handing it to me.

"Don't you have any milk or sugar?" I said, taking the hot basin in my hand and holding it by a little rim at the bottom, the only place one could hold it for the heat.

"No, anything else spoil it. You drink that and I make you another."

She threw away the first leaves, put a fresh pinch of tea in, filled up the bowl and strained it off into another as before, then picked up the second by the bottom rim, drained it, and repeated the process with marvellous rapidity. I watched her, sipping my own.

"Do you like it?" she asked. "It is real gold-tipped Orange Pekoe.

Very good tea, indeed!"

I drank it. It had a wonderful flavour. I told her so and took another cup, to her great delight.

The waiter came in, laid our supper on the table, put the champagne in ice, and departed. I offered Suzee the wine, but she said she had all the tea she could drink. She was willing to eat, however, and we sat down to the table.

"I want you to tell me all about what happened at Sitka," I said. "How did poor old Hop Lee die?"

"Oh, it was all such a dreadful thing, Treevor," she returned, spreading out both hands, on the wrists of which heavy silver bangles set with amethysts shone and tinkled. "He went down one day to Fort Wrangle on business and when he came back one day after, he had a fearful cough, and then he got very ill and went to bed, and I sat beside him and he got worse and worse. Oh, so bad, and the doctor came and he had very much medicine, and then his chest began to bleed, and he coughed very much blood for days and days and weeks, and I nursed him all that time, Treevor, all night long. I got no sleep at all; oh, it was very, very bad."

I looked at her curiously. I could not somehow picture Suzee as the devoted nurse passing sleepless nights and never absent from the pillow of the suffering Hop Lee.

As I looked at her, I noticed the strange thickening of the features and darkening of the skin I had noted before at Sitka, and knew the blood was mounting into the face, though she could not blush, as the English girl blushes, red.

"It is really true, Treevor," she said, in an aggrieved tone.

"I am not contradicting you," I replied calmly, "go on."

"At last he died," she continued, though in rather a sulky tone, "and doctor said I might die too, I had made myself so ill, so thin with waiting on him. My bones stuck out so," she put her hands edgeways to her sides to indicate how her ribs, now remarkably well covered, had stood out from her sufferings; but remembering the fictitious blows she had recounted to me when I first met her, I was not so much stirred by her recital as I might otherwise have been.

"And what about the child?" I asked.

"The boy? Oh, Treevor, he died very soon after. He caught cold from his father, I think."

"Did he die of cold and cough, too, then?" I asked.

"Yes, he coughed till he died. Oh, I cried so much when he died. My baby boy, my very big baby, I did love him so."

She blinked her glorious eyes very much as if they were full of tears at the recollection, but I did not see any fall, and she pursued her supper without any interruption of appetite.

I sat back in my chair, watching her and musing. Poor old Hop Lee! I wondered what his last moments had been like, and whether those dainty fingers had really been employed smoothing his brow, or counting his effects, at the last?

"And then what came after?" I asked. "How did it come that you were to be sold, as you said?"

"We were very poor when he died; so poor, and we owed a lot, and his brother came up from Juneau and took over the tea-shop and everything. Then he said he had offer from big Chinaman who would buy me, and he said my husband owe him lot of money, he sell me, get it back, and he sent me down to Nanine in 'Frisco to give to big Chinaman; but I told Nanine you would give more, so Nanine kept me for you."

"But how will your husband's brother get the money for you in that case?" I said.

"What a lot of questions you do ask, Treevor!" she returned sulkily. "I don't know how he will get the money. He will make Nanine give him some, I suppose. Let us forget it all, I don't want to think of that any more."

I laughed.

"Very well. If you have finished your supper, come over here and sit on my knee and we will forget it all, as you say."

She rose willingly and came over to me, a lovely, shimmering, Oriental vision, dainty and perfect.

"I must paint you, Suzee, some day just as you appear now and call you

The Beauty of China, or something like that. You seem the joy of the

East incarnate."

Suzee frowned and then smiled.

"I do not like such long words. I do not understand you when you talk like that; but I love you, Treevor, so, so much."

The misty light of dawn was rolling over 'Frisco when I shewed Suzee her own room, where according to the pact with the manager, she was to sleep.

She shivered as we went into it.

"Oh, Treevor, what a great big room," she said; "I am frightened at it. Won't you stay with me? Or let me be in yours?"

"I said you should sleep here," I answered; "so you must. Jump into bed quick and go to sleep; you will soon forget the size of the room. I am dead tired now, I must go and get some sleep myself. Good-night, dear."

I kissed her and went back to the sitting-room. The morning light struggling with the artificial fell on the table with its scattered plates and glasses, and on her little trunk and the unpacked silken clothes.

I turned out the lights and drew up the blinds, and stood looking out. The waves of soft white fog filled the empty streets. All was quiet, white, in the dawn.

I had said I was tired, yet now sleep seemed far from my eyes, and my mind flew out over intervening space to Viola, longing to find her, wherever she was.

Where would she be? I could imagine her waking with this same dawn in her calm, innocent bed, and gazing, too, into this white light, and longing for me. Surely she would be that? The words of her letter came back to me: the time would pass "slowly as a winter night to me, your Viola."

She was right. Nothing could divide us permanently, really. Perhaps even Death would be powerless to do that.

I had a dissatisfied feeling with myself. Would it have been better, I asked myself, to have waited through this year alone, since nothing could really satisfy or delight me in her absence? What was the good, after all, of chasing the mere shadow of the joy I had with her?

But, strangely enough, I felt that Viola had no wish that I should pass this mysterious year of separation she had imposed upon us, alone.

She had confessed her inability to share my love with any other. The incident of Veronica had made that clear; but now that she chose to deny herself to me she seemed rather to wish than otherwise that I should seek adventures, experiences elsewhere. And I felt indefinitely, yet strongly, that the more I could crush into this year of life and of artistic inspiration, especially the latter, the happier she would feel when we met.

Perhaps she wished to tire me with lesser loves, certain that her own must prevail against them. Perhaps she had even left me solely for this, with this idea. Knowing herself unable to bear the pain of infidelity to her when she was present, yet, accepting it as tending to some ultimate psychological end, she had withdrawn herself from me.

I remembered she had said once to me:

"I would so much rather be a man's last love, the crowning love of his life, the one whose image would be with him as he passed from this world, than his first; poor little toy of his youth, forgotten, unheeded, effaced by the passions of his life at the zenith."

Perhaps, ... but, ah! what was the use of speculation when it might all be wrong?

Some reason was there, guiding that subtle mystery of her brain, and I, if I fulfilled her expressed wishes, was doing the utmost to carry out that plan of hers which I could not yet understand.

A feeling of excessive weariness invaded me, mental and physical, and as the light grew stronger, breaking into day, I went to my own room to sleep.

As soon as I woke I got up and went to look at my new possession. To my surprise the room seemed empty. I looked round. No Suzee. I went up to the bed. It had apparently not been slept in, but two of the blankets had been pulled off and disappeared.

As I stood by the bedside, wondering what had become of her, I felt a soft kiss on my ankles and, looking down, there she was, creeping out from under the bed with one of the blankets round her. Her hair was a lovely undisarranged mass; but the rosebuds in it were dead, and it was dusty. Her face looked like white silk in its youthful pallor. She smiled up delightedly at me and crawled out farther from the bed valance.

"What are you doing down there?" I asked. "Wasn't the bed comfortable?"

"Oh yes, Treevor, underneath I was very comfortable and warm. You see, I have always been accustomed to something over my head, and in this room the ceiling is such a long way off."

She got up and stood before me, her rounded shoulders and sweetly moulded arms shewing above the blanket.

"You don't mind, do you?" she added, with a note of quick anxiety.

I laughed as I remembered the low ceilings, almost on one's head, that are the rule in Chinatown, and caught her up in my arms.

"No, I don't mind," I said; "only get into bed now, and don't shew that you have slept underneath instead of inside. I am going to order breakfast and I will call you in a minute or two."

I threw her on to the bed, into which she rolled like a kitten, kissed her, and went back to my own room.

When we had had breakfast I took Suzee with me on the car, and all the eyes of its occupants fixed upon us for the whole of the journey. This was harmless, however, and I did not mind, while Suzee sat apparently sublimely unconscious of the rude stares and ruder smiles, with the calm gravity of the Oriental who is above insults because he considers himself above criticism.

At the office where I went to buy tickets for our journey I was put to worse annoyance. I had taken tickets for two from 'Frisco to City of Mexico when the clerk, looking suddenly from me to my childish companion, said: "We can't give you a section,[A] sir."

"Why not?" I demanded.

"Only married couples," he remarked tersely, and turned away.

I told Suzee to go outside, and went to another part of the office, bought my section ticket from another clerk while the first was engaged, and then joined her. I began to realise that petty difficulties would line the path the whole way, and I must make some effort to minimise them.

We went to a café for lunch, and after seating ourselves at a table a little away from the staring crowd, I said: "I expect it would be better if we got you some American clothes."

"Very well, Treevor," she returned docilely, and leant her pretty, round, ivory-hued cheek on her hand as she looked across at me adoringly. Had I suggested cutting off her head, I believe she would have looked the same.

"We must try after lunch to get some," I continued. "And don't be too submissive to me in public. You see, it's not at all the fashion with us for wives to be that way, and it makes people think you are not mine."

Suzee laughed gaily: the idea seemed to amuse her.

After lunch we went to one of the large stores, and Suzee, in her scarlet silk attracted of course general attention. We found, however, a sensible saleswoman to whom I explained that I wanted a grey travelling costume, and she and Suzee disappeared from me entirely, into the fitting-room.

Left alone, I swung myself back on a chair and lapsed into thought.

When Suzee at last came back an exclamation broke from me. She was spoilt. Lovely as she seemed in her own picturesque clothing, in the rough grey cloth of hideous Western dress she looked simply a little guy. Reading my face at a glance, her own clouded instantly, and in another second she would have thrown herself at my feet had I not warned her by a look and a gesture not to. I sprang up and turned to the saleswoman.

"Is this the best, the prettiest costume you have?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. You see it's so difficult to fit the young lady without any corsets, and she is really so short we have only a few skirts that will do for her."

I looked at Suzee as she stood before me. The figure, so exquisite in its lines when unclothed, looked too soft and shapeless under the cloth coat. She appeared absurdly short, too, beside the American assistant, who stood at least five feet eleven. I could not bear to see my little Suzee so disfigured. However, that she looked far more ordinary could not be disputed. She would attract less attention now, and that might be an advantage. Her head was still bare and had its Oriental character, but the colour of her skin against the grey cloth lost its creaminess that it had possessed above the blue silk jacket. It now looked merely sallow.

I paid nine guineas for the hideous dress, ordered the silk clothes to be sent to the hotel, and then we went on to the millinery. Amongst these frightful edifices my heart sank still more, but I steeled myself to the ordeal, and, choosing out the simplest grey one I could find, directed the giggling young shop-assistant to try it on Suzee.

The immense coiffure of shining black hair of the Chinese girl did not lend itself to any Western hat. Hat and hair together made her head appear out of proportion to the small, short figure.

At last, in despair, I said:

"You must alter your hair and do it in a different way. Could you take it down now and roll it up small at the back, do you think?"

Suzee gazed on me in mild surprise.

"Take my hair down, here and now! Why, it's done up for a fortnight!" she answered simply, while the shop-girl turned away to replace a hat and hide her titters.

"Do you only do your hair once a fortnight?" I enquired, surprised in my turn.

"Yes, that's all. It's such a bother to do. It was done just before you came. I thought it would do for a month, I took such pains with it."

A month! So that beautiful, scented, shining coiffure was only brushed out once a month!

A sudden memory of Viola and her gleaming light tresses swept over me, as I had seen them at night lying on her shoulders. But had I not often waited for her till I was deadly sleepy, and when at length she came to the bedside and I had asked her what she had been doing all that time, had she not generally said-"brushing her hair"?

Perhaps, after all, a coiffure that never detained its owner at night except once a month might have its advantages.

By the time these reflections had swept over me, Suzee herself had found a little grey velvet hat that looked less dreadful than the rest. I had only to pay for it, which I did, and she walked away with me in her Western clothes. At the glove counter things went well, and she triumphed over her civilised sisters. Her tiny supple hands were easily fitted by number five, and tired and thirsty with our efforts we left the store and found our way to a tea-shop.

The change in dress made matters easier. She did not attract much notice now; and unless any one looked very closely at her, she would pass for any little ordinary, unattractive European girl. It rather ruffled my vanity to think she should look like this, but I consoled myself with thinking of the evening, when the hideous disguise could be laid aside and she would appear again in her amber beauty and I could pose her in a hundred ways.

We had several cups of tea apiece. Very good I found it, though Suzee somewhat disdainfully remarked it was not like China tea; and then returned to the hotel.

As I passed through the swing doors with my reclothed and much altered companion, the proprietor came hastily forwards with protestation written on his face. He evidently thought I had erred again and this was another investment. He was about to impart vigorously his opinion of me when a hasty glance at Suzee's face and my bland look of enquiry stopped him. Instead of addressing us, he wheeled round discomfited and disappeared into his bureau.

"Why does that man always look so crossly at you?" enquired Suzee, as we were walking down the passage to our rooms.

"He does not approve of my wickedness in having you here," I answered laughing. "He thinks a man must never be with any woman but his wife."

"And has he a wife?"

"Yes, that great creature you saw sitting in the glass desk downstairs."

Suzee threw up her chin and pursed up her soft blue-red lips.

"I know that man by sight quite well. He was always down with the girls in Chinatown. He was one of Nanine's best customers."

I laughed as I put the key in, and opened our door.

"That accounts then, quite, for his terrific propriety in his hotel," I answered. "It's always the way. You can tell the really vicious person by his affected horror of vice."

We dined upstairs, and directly after dinner I got her to pose for me that I might catch the first idea for my picture "The Joy of the East."

She still shewed an apparently unconquerable objection to any undraped study, so I did not press it, but told her to dress as she had been dressed the previous night, in blue and mauve with silver ornaments, and I would take her in that.

While she was arraying herself I sat back in my chair, thinking.

How strange it was that a girl like Viola, who I believed would have been burnt alive rather than let an untruth pass her lips, who could not possibly have done a dishonourable action, had posed for me so simply and fearlessly, viewing the whole matter from that artistic standpoint which is so lofty because so really pure; and this girl, whose soul, as I knew, was full of trickery and treachery, and whose lips were worn with lies, clothed herself about with this ridiculous prudery and imagined it was modesty!

She came back presently, wonderfully lovely in the bizarre Oriental costume, and I wanted her to stand on tiptoe, leaning towards me and laughing.

But she was not a good model; she soon grew tired and failed to keep the same pose or expression. She fidgeted so, that at last I laid the paper aside.

"Your expression won't go with that title," I said. "What is the matter? Can't you stand still and look happy for fifteen minutes?"

"It's so tiring to stand quite still," she said crossly, and my heart reproached me as I thought of Viola and the hours she had stood for me without a word of complaint in the London studio!

"Well, I'll try another picture. I shall call it 'The Spoiled Favourite of the Harem,' Throw yourself into that chair and look as cross as you like."

Suzee sat down opposite me. I put her head back against the chair; her right arm hung over the side, in her left hand she held a cigarette, one foot was bent under her, the other swung listlessly to the ground.

Her expression, restless and dissatisfied, her attitude, weary and enervated, gave the idea of the title admirably, and I made a good sketch.

She was sitting down now so she could keep still without much difficulty, and her air of ennui suited this theme well enough.

As soon as I had finished the sketch and told her she might get up she was delighted. She did not seem to take much interest in the picture, however, but rather regard it grudgingly as it took up my attention. She was only happy again when I took her on my knees and caressed her, telling her she was the loveliest Eastern I had ever seen.

The following day we started on our journey southward.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Sleeping berth for two persons in the Pullman car.]