"I have been with Mrs. Fujinami and Sadako," Asako panted, "they would not let me go; and oh!"—She was going to tell him all about her mother's picture; but she suddenly checked herself, and said instead, "They've got such a lovely garden."
She described the home of the cousins in glowing colours, the hospitality of the family, the cleverness of cousin Sadako, and the lessons which they were going to exchange. Yes, she replied to Geoffrey's questions, she had seen the memorial tablets of her father and mother, and their wedding photograph. But a strange paralysis sealed her lips, and her soul became inarticulate. She found herself absolutely incapable of telling that big foreign husband of hers, truly as she loved him, the veritable state of her emotions when brought face to face with her dead parents.
Geoffrey had never spoken to her of her mother. He had never seemed to have the least interest in her identity. These "Jap women," as he called them, were never very real to him. She dreaded the possibility of revealing to him her secret, and then of receiving no response to her emotion. Also she had an instinctive reluctance to emphasise in Geoffrey's mind her kinship with these alien people.
After dinner, when she had gone up to her room, Geoffrey was left alone with his cigar and his reflection.
"Funny that she did not speak more about her father and mother. But I suppose they don't mean much to her, after all. And, by Jove, it's a good thing for me! I wouldn't like to have a wife who was all the time running home to her people, and comparing notes with her mother."
Upstairs in her bedroom, Asako had unrolled the precious obi. An unmounted photograph came fluttering out of the parcel. It was a portrait of her father alone taken a short time before his death. At the back of the photograph was some Japanese writing.
"Is Tanaka there?" Asako asked her maid Titine.
Yes, of course, Tanaka was there, in the next room with his ear near the door.
"Tanaka, what does this mean?"
"Japanese poem," he said, "meaning very difficult: very many meanings: I think perhaps it means, having travelled all over the world, he feels very sad."