“Japanese!”
“Yes; I adopted her.”
George du Telle snorted, and fortunately at that moment a panel slid back, and Pine-breeze appeared with the tea, followed by Lotus-bud with an hibachi and Cherry-blossom with a heap of tiny plates.
“Are these your—I mean is one of these your—”
“Daughter? No. Turn round, and you will see her,”
Jane was seated with her back to the drawn-back panel that made a doorway on to the veranda. She turned, and there in the sunlit space stood Campanula in her blue kimono, broad scarlet obi, and with a scarlet flower in her hair. Behind her, as a background, lay the picture garden, antique hills, spun-glass torrents, and tiny, twisted fir trees, that looked, oh, so old, and tired of the world, and tormented by the wind.
Campanula went right down on her knees upon the matting, and murmured the usual Japanese welcome.
Now this was a practice that Leslie disliked. He had tried to break her of it, and in the attempt he had come across a strange fact.
Campanula in her heart of hearts was a real child of Old Japan. She might have been a sister to the seven-and-forty Ronins in the time before Osaka was defiled by factory chimneys, and the monastery of Kotoku-in by the presence of Cook’s tourists.
She tried honestly to be modern, as it was the wish of Leslie, but in times of emotion, back her intellect would go to Old Japan, and she would act as her ancestors had acted in who knows what lotus-strewn and blossom-scented ages.