All my life I've been a rover; I have ranged the wide world over, And I've had the very devil of a time; I've philandered through Alsatia with the nautch-girl and the geisha; I have heard the bells of San Marino chime.

I said, 'If this is the champion geisha, take me back to the land of the chorus girl.'

She knew, too, that her name was Geisha McCoy, and she knew what that name meant, just as you do.

She had even laughed and quickened and responded to Geisha McCoy's manipulation of her audience, just as you have.

So she, as well as the minor hotel employés, knew six-eighteen as Geisha McCoy.

Geisha McCoy, who got a thousand a week for singing a few songs and chatting informally with the delighted hundreds on the other side of the footlights.

Geisha McCoy made nothing of those same footlights.

Six months had wrought a subtle change in Geisha McCoy.

And Geisha McCoy's quick intelligence and drama-sense responded to the picture of this calm and capable figure in the midst of the feverish, over-lighted, over-heated room.

" "Some people have all the luck," sighed Geisha McCoy, and dropped listlessly back on her pillows.

But Geisha McCoy's emotion was made of different stuff.

And into Martha Foote's face there came such a look of mingled compassion and mirth as to bring a quick flame of fury into Geisha McCoy's eyes.

" "You're forgetting the wail," Geisha McCoy suggested, icily.

" "Well, what's the idea!" demanded Geisha McCoy.

Geisha McCoy waved a hand at the mulatto maid.

Something of this must have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy's tone was half-pettish, half-apologetic as she spoke.

Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down.

Geisha McCoy's head came up.

" Geisha McCoy was looking up at her with a whimsical half-smile.

Will you let me tuck you away in it?" Geisha McCoy slid down among her rumpled covers, and nestled her head in the lumpy, tortured pillows.

I just thought if I could help" Geisha McCoy leaned forward with one of her quick movements and caught Martha Foote's hand in both her own, "You have!

Well, I've mixed with everything from hula dancers to geisha girls, not forgettin' the Barbary Coast in the old days, butwell, I ain't what you'd rightly call a dancer.

Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of geisha) only to smooth the angularity of their movements.

There was one set of Geisha girls who were masked below the eyes, one of whom sang what she fondly imagined was a typical American song calculated to captivate her American audience.

After the edge of Josiah's hunger wuz squenched he begun to look about him and praise up the looks of the Geisha girls that wuz dancin' or rather posterin' in their pretty modest way, and some on 'em playin' on queer lookin' instruments that looked some like my carpet sweeper.