Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/87

Rh She has a rather pretty voice, and more idea of expression than any other Japanese singer I have heard.

Night comes at last, and after a long look down from the verandah at the hundreds of lights gleaming far below, we go to rest upon the mattresses which Oka’s wife has unrolled ready for us upon the floor; Mousmé with her head fixed into the groove of a block of mahogany, which serves her as a pillow, and preserves her wonderful erection of hair intact.

We are under a huge mosquito-net, of course—one of steel-blue gauze. When I first came I used to detest the confinement, and tried to do without it. But mosquitos are invincible, humanity frail, and the epidermis easily punctured. I returned to the protection of what I laughingly got to call “my meat-safe,” after the second night.

Outside our tent-like mosquito-curtain