that he had no intentions. So much was evident to me after five minutes’ talk in the cool room. He didn’t want to chatter about her, but began instead to tell me untellable things about the new geisha. He didn’t even seem to think Miss Hyacinth pretty. How strange, I thought! And then he went on again to sing the praises of the geisha, who was called Silver-Moon Face. His taste was evidently vitiated; he preferred art to nature, tricks to charms, a whitened face with two hectic spots of rouge, and the gold-lined lip, to the damask skin and smiles of my mousmé. But all this was very satisfactory to me, nevertheless.
I must have kept returning to the subject of Miss Hyacinth, for all at once he makes a discovery, and says without preamble, and as if certain in his own mind that he has “hit the right nail on the head”—
