CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER I.
Mousmé is leaning over me as I write. Mousmé, a butterfly from a far Eastern land, her dress of apricot silk, with a magenta satin obi (sash), a blot of bright colour in the dulness of my English study. My Mousmé! with Dresden-china tinted cheeks, and tiny ways; playing at life, as it always seems to me, with the dainty grace of Japan, that idealised doll’s-house land. Mousmé, who goes with me everywhere, whose bizarre clothing attracts notice to her even when the delicately pretty face of a child-woman with innocent, soft eyes and finely arched brows is hidden behind the ever-present fan, which she draws from the ample folds of her obi.
My friends at Nagasaki told me that I was foolish to marry a mousmé, especially as I was to return to England so soon.
“Why not hire one for the remaining period of your stay?” suggested Kotmasu, who dined with me at my little toy-like villa so often that he began to offer advice as a matter of course. “Misawa would find you a mousmé,” he continued, “whom you could put off as easily as an old glove. A real mousmé, not a geisha girl with a past, an ambiguous present, and a who-knows-what future.”
Others of my friends laughed till they made the paper partitions of my house shiver like the strings and parchment of the samisen. “You will tire of her,” said they.
Yet others with a knowing smile, “She will tire of you. They are all the same. Butterflies that change with the day. Moths which the night-air of reality blows to pieces.”
But I would not be advised.
Advice is so cheap one seldom values it. Besides, had I not lived in Japan long enough to know what I was doing?