“Everything was all right as it was.”
“No! No! I could not live that way.”
“I can’t see why. I don’t see it. Now you’ve pretty nearly ruined both of us. However, we’ve got to think of some way for you to go back.”
“But I can’t. I’ve lost the possibility of that. If I had not thought you wished me, I might not have come to you, but I could not stay there.”
“That’s foolishness. Anyhow, you can go to your own family, and when he finds that is where you are, he’ll want you to come back.”
Her mind was dully grasping that here, with this man, she had no refuge, but her heart would not believe.
“I wished to make it complete,” she repeated. “I wanted to give up everything for you.”
What folly, what sheer childish folly, he told her, that she had listened seriously to his idle, passing phrases. Why, always, she must have known that he was merely answering her vanity. Any woman should have known and accepted that.
The ceaseless words and the staccato rapping of the pipe continued. We dismissed from our minds any intention of sending for the mistress, but not from prying curiosity. Our sleeping, or our not sleeping, was not of importance. In merciful pity (at least as we thought) for the woman, we knew that that contest must be settled as it was being settled. “But,” Hori whispered, “it would be a mighty big satisfaction to mix in a little physical argument.”
“No one at this inn knows who I am,” the man continued. “No one has any idea that you have more than the slightest acquaintanceship with me. No one would ever be convinced that you ran away to meet me.”