Reggie arranged the blossom in a triumphal arch over the corner table, where stood the silent company of the Buddhas. From among the trees he chose his favourite, a kind of dwarf cedar, to place between the window, opening on to a sunny veranda, and an old gold screen, across whose tender glory wound the variegated comicality of an Emperor's traveling procession, painted by a Kano artist of three centuries ago.
He removed the books which were lying about the room--grim Japanese grammars, and forbidding works on International Law; and in their place he left volumes of poetry and memoirs, and English picture-papers strewn about in artistic disorder. Then he gave the silver frames of his photographs to To to be polished, the photographs of fair women signed with Christian names, of diplomats in grand uniforms, and of handsome foreigners.
Having reduced the serious atmosphere of his study so as to give an impression of amiable indolence, Reggie Forsyth lit a cigarette and strolled out into the garden, amused at his own impatience. In London he would never have bestirred himself for old Geoffrey Barrington, who was only a Philistine, after all, with no sense of the inwardness of things.
Reggie was a slim and graceful young man, with thin fair hair brushed flat back from his forehead. A certain projection of bones under the face gave him an almost haggard look; and his dancing blue eyes seemed to be never still. He wore a suit of navy serge fitting close to his figure, black tie, and grey spats. In fact, he was as immaculate as a young diplomat should always be.
Outside his broad veranda was a gravel path, and beyond that a Japanese garden, the hobby of one of his predecessors, a miniature domain of hillocks and shrubs, with the inevitable pebbly water course, in which a bronze crane was perpetually fishing. Over the red-brick wall which encircles the Embassy compound the reddish buds of a cherry avenue were bursting in white stars.
The compound of the Embassy is a fragment of British soil. The British flag floats over it; and the Japanese authorities have no power within its walls. Its large population of Japanese servants, about one hundred and fifty in all, are free from the burden of Japanese taxes; and, since the police may not enter, gambling, forbidden throughout the Empire, flourishes there; and the rambling servants' quarters behind the Ambassador's house are the Monte Carlo of the Tokyo _betto_ (coachman) and _kurumaya_ (rickshaw runner). However, since the alarming discovery that a professional burglar had, Diogenes-like, been occupying an old tub in a corner of the wide grounds, a policeman has been allowed to patrol the garden; but he has to drop that omnipotent swagger which marks his presence outside the walls.