The cry died away, and only the low moan was heard within the little room. Morris opened the gate and came lightly up the pathway, whistling a few bars of the latest popular song. He came inside the room, and, hardly able to distinguish the objects, looked about wonderingly, then seeing Yuki lying where she had thrown herself, he went over to her and picked her up.
"My sweetheart, what is it? What has happened?" He sat down upon the long chair and held her against him. "Tell me, dear one, tell me."
Morris went over to the lamp after a few moments and lighted it, then came back and showed Yuki a little gift he had brought her. She took it and looked at it with eyes filled with tragic grief; then, pressing it against her face, put her head on his shoulder and began sobbing in a heart-broken way that amazed Morris.
She lay with her face hidden, he softly caressing her hair. Finally she said:
"Morris, we have been here two years. Tell me—have I made you happy?"
Morris threw back his head and laughed happily.
"Happy, Yuki, happy? Dear heart, I had a long time ago put aside the thought that love meant happiness and happiness meant love. Now you have taught me that one cannot exist without the other. I love you, I live with you, you are mine. That tells everything. When you came into my life, into my heart, I was soured and embittered. Life meant only work and duties done; after that, comfort and a cigar—that was all. But now, I love my work as well, I do it as thoroughly, but there is something more. I know when I shut the office-door, I can come here where no one can enter. I can be alone with the woman I love and who loves me. There is no question of society or dinners, but just us two alone, you and me—and," turning up her face, "you are happy with me, my Yuki San? You love me?"
Yuki did not reply at once. Then in a low, sweet voice she replied:
"Morris, we Japanese women never speak of love. It is to us a subject left to singing girls and geishas. Without it we marry, and without it we live, and it is, unless by chance, a closed book to us. I do not know if I love you as the women of your race love their Dana Sans—I know I think of you by day, and I dream of you by night. I live only for you—to be what you wish me to be—and when you take me in your arms and say, 'My Yuki San, my sweetheart,' it seems to me that my heart with its happiness will break! I do not know if that is love—but if it be—I love you, my Dana San, I love you."
She lay quietly, and he rested his face against her hair, caressing it from time to time. After a silence, he inquired lightly: