But the next day trouble, though not exactly of the heart, did arrive. It was one of Arisuga's days of retreat from Hoshiko. He asked her why she lived there—in China—when she might live in Japan, where she belonged.
She answered him that her father had come there many years before, when she was a child.
"I will ask him the reason if you wish."
"No, no, no!" laughed Arisuga. "What does it matter, my dear child?"
She ran away from him again. And all that day she kept repeating:—
"'My dear child'! I am as tall as he!"
And at night, again, while the maid was undressing her, it was that still.
"Now he shall never know who—what I am. For I am beautiful. The mirror says so. As beautiful as if I were not—what I am. Look, look and tell me!"
This the maid, for the hundredth time since he had come, did.
"You are, indeed, beautiful, dear mistress, yet, nevertheless, it is your duty to tell him! Otherwise he might wish to marry you. Already he loves you."