"No," she said in denial, "he is your brother. He will be my best friend. He will be godfather to our child."
I staggered half-way across the room—that infant talking of a child!
"In heaven's good name," I said, "what do you want with a child?"
"That I may not be lonely when I old," said little Kamura-san.
Still, out of curiosity now, I went to see the house-mother of Kamura-san. Her head was poised on her shoulders like a snake's, and her eyes were the eyes of a snake—black, beady, and glittering. A face more hard, cunning, cruel, and smilingly crafty I never saw, and it took her but a little while to discover that I was an unsatisfactory customer, and I couldn't help wondering what that Austrian father would have thought and felt had he seen that snake-like hag trying to barter with me for his own flesh and blood. I left the young officer there and naturally the house-mother tried to sell the child to him.
Kamura-san I never saw again. When I came back from Manchuria I heard that she was gone—whither I don't know, but I'm hoping that the Austrian father by some chance may some day see these lines.
But no more now of temples, blossoms, pictures, netsuke, tea-houses, wrestling-matches, theatres, and the what-not that everybody with a pen has so wearisomely done to death. News of the battle of Nanshan has come in. Next week we leave again.