"That's the trouble in Japan, if a girl grows a few years older than twenty, the family consider that it is a disgrace if she doesn't marry. That is why they are beginning to worry about me, especially as they have had to give it up about my sister; but then they think that in her case it is the fault of the schooling she received abroad. So now they are doubly anxious on my account; they don't want two old maids well over twenty in the family. But now that I have run away, that would be an even worse scandal. The papers would play it up as they did the countess who tried to commit double suicide with a chauffeur, or as they did with Akiko-san, the millionaire's wife who ran away with a poet. You know, I have been in the papers once already. That was when they were making such a fuss about Japanese girls dancing foreign fashion, and some of them even published the names of girls who went to dances. One of them mentioned my name, and my parents were so angry. Now, if they don't leave me alone, I won't go home, and the papers will learn about my having run away, and that will be worse than ever, especially because I have run away to a foreigner."
She leaned back, crossed one knee over the other, looked at him expectantly. She had gained her composure entirely, even enjoyed the situation, now that the difficult part, the telling, was done with. She evidently anticipated approval from him, praise of her cleverness. But the revelation of her motive in coming to him was like a douche of cold water. Of course, he ought to be pleased. What he had taken to be the unfolding of a melodrama, tragedy possibly, developing slowly, ominously, towards an inescapable woeful climax, had suddenly grotesquely become transformed into a droll burlesque, fantastic but harmless. But the suddenness of the metamorphosis irritated him, the sense of finding himself taking a rôle in farce where he had, gravely, been preparing himself for pathos. So all his vain imaginings that she might have sought him out because of affection on her part, because of her having greater confidence in him, was mere fancy. The little minx was using him merely as a convenient lay figure where a moment before he had thought himself to be cast in a principal rôle. What an anti-climax!
"And now that you have planned it all out so well, what do you propose to do now? What do you expect me to do?"
She caught the irony in his voice. "Now, please, Kent-san, don't be angry. I thought you would be pleased when I got it all arranged so nicely. I thought it all out last night. You wouldn't really want me to run away to you, with you, would you now?"
Was she in earnest? Was the serious note that had crept into her voice, the appeal vaguely to be sensed therein, something more than mere anxiety to dispel his displeasure with her stratagem? How much did she think of him, or how little? It seemed as if he might detect the faintest undertone of earnestness under the words rippling from her lips, a hint of dark shadow deep in her eyes. For a moment the temptation to grasp her hands, to draw her to him, to learn just what was passing in her mind, gripped him; but instantly came the other thought,—what if she should be in earnest? He shook himself together; he had been on the brink of taking a chance which might have been replete with fateful potentialities. Steady!
"No such luck, of course." Purposely he spoke lightly, banteringly. The moment had passed safely; still, curiosity piqued him and he knew it would continue to do so—now that he would never know.
"You know, I think the very best thing would be to have a talk with your sister." The only thing for him to do now was to get this tangle straightened as soon and as neatly as possible. "She could fix it up for you with your parents. Do you think you can get her here to-day if you send a telegram?"
"Oh, yes; it's only a couple of hours by train." She adopted the suggestion easily, seemed almost to have lost interest. It was arranged that Kent should return to the house that afternoon that council might be held between him and the sisters. The entire episode was becoming flat and prosaic.
On his way to the office he wondered whether he had better look up Kikuchi. They were intimate; had he been an American he should surely have sought a frank discussion of the whole affair. He was sure that Kikuchi would be able to give the advice which he felt he needed as he stumbled fumblingly into this maze of Oriental convention and custom, prescriptive usages governed by modes of thought crystallized by centuries of observance, at which he might but conjecture vaguely. But as he thought of how he might venture to approach the subject, it seemed too amazingly difficult, too delicate a matter to attack hampered by uncertainty as to the reactions which might be caused in the Oriental mind.