"But why?" asked Geoffrey. He felt that Murata was keeping something from him. The little man answered,—
"He thought that for a woman the life is more happy in Europe; he wished Asako to forget altogether that she was Japanese."
"Yes, but now she is married and her future is fixed. She is not going back permanently to Japan, but just to see the country. I think we would both of us like to. People say it is a magnificent country."
"You are very kind," said Murata, "to speak so of my country. But the foreign people who marry Japanese are happy if they stay in their own country, and Japanese who marry foreigners are happy if they go away from Japan. But if they stay in Japan they are not happy. The national atmosphere in Japan is too strong for those people who are not Japanese or are only half Japanese. They fade. Besides life in Japan is very poor and rough. I do not like it myself."
Somehow Geoffrey could not accept these as being the real reasons. He had never had a long talk with a Japanese man before; but he felt that if they were all like that, so formal, so unnatural, so secretive, then he had better keep out of the range of Asako's relatives.
He wondered what his wife really thought of the Muratas, and during the return to their hotel, he asked,—
"Well, little girl, do you want to go back again and live at Auteuil?"
She shook her head.
"But it is nice to think you have always got an extra home in Paris, isn't it?" he went on, fishing for an avowal that home was in his arms only, a kind of conversation which was the wine of life to him at that period.
"No," she answered with a little shudder, "I don't call that home."