“Love makes me so,” she said, and sighed.
“How strange,” he said, “that we should speak so freely of our love. A little while ago the subject would have been deemed indecent. Now it is a foreign fashion and we Japanese speak out our love without the smallest blush of shame. ’Tis strange, indeed!”
“It is not only fashion,” she protested; “love is not a new thing,—a caprice, a whim, like such and such a dress, a hat or shoe or fan.”
“It is a new device of speech in our Japan,” the prince declared, thoughtfully.
With childish petulance she turned toward the balcony.
“Which you do not approve, Komatzu?”
“Why, yes, I do approve it, Sado-ko. It is most beautiful and pure, moreover. But, cousin, as you know, I never spoke it yet—this love—till lately. Then, somehow, when you came back from the palace Aoyama, a something in your eyes seemed to beckon me to you and force the words of love to overrun my lips.”
“They were not merely words of lips?”
“No, no. But I, you know, am not completely modern in my thought, despite my dress, and, too, I am a soldier. So sometimes if my words seem clumsy—stupid—I fear you must compare them with the flowery speeches of others.”
“Others, Komatzu? What others could there be?”