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"You throw yourself into the battle quickly, even before you have reached Japan," she smiled. "You have chosen your side early. It may not be entirely wise, but I liked it. Thank you."

It embarrassed him. "But surely it was the only thing to do, you know. She heard it. It was so unexpected, so utterly undeserved."

"I know. Still, you will see much of just that kind of thing in Japan. I feel sorry for that poor girl. She will have a hard time, and she suspects it. You know, she went to America when she was only eight years old, was adopted by her uncle and aunt. They sent her to college. She has been thoroughly foreignized. Now they have both died and she is going back to her own family. I know of them. Her brothers have both been abroad and have the foreign manner, but they are Japanese. She is nothing, neither Japanese nor foreign, or, rather, she is both, Japanese body and foreign mind. And her parents are typically old-fashioned Japanese. She has learned to expect the courtesy, the deference paid our women, the 'ladies first' of our world. Now she will be forced into the strait-jacket of Japanese women. She will be beautifully dressed and will have motor cars and all that, but she will learn that her freedom is gone, her personality is gone, and that it is 'men first' always in Japan. That is the way it will be with her with the Japanese, and then, if she goes with the foreigners, if she is allowed to mingle with them well—you saw what happened to-night. It is fortunate for her that she will not live in Yokohama. In Tokyo it is better. There the foreigners are scattered, and they mingle more sympathetically, generally, with the Japanese; but in Yokohama, where all the foreigners live together in the Settlement, with their little cliques, and coteries, and constant gossip and observing what every one does, there a girl like she is much held at arm's length. It is the women mainly who cause it. They make the men feel that they must not show too much interest, or they suffer their displeasure."