"Her father and mine are neighbors, and very dear friends. I have known her all my life. When she was a little girl I used to carry her on my shoulders over brooks and through the woods and mountain passes, because she was so little, and I was always afraid she would fall and hurt herself."
Cleo was silent now. She scarcely stirred while the young man was speaking, but listened to him with strange interest. Takashima continued: "I used to tell her I would some day be her Otto (husband), and because she was so very fond of me that pleased her very much, and when I said so to our fathers, it pleased them also."
The girl was nervously twisting her little handkerchief into odd knots. She was not looking at Takashima.
"How queer," she said, "that our childhood memories are sometimes so clear to us! We so often look back on them and think how—how absurd we were then. Don't you think there is really more in the past to regret than anything else?"
Takashima looked at her in surprise.
"No," he said; almost shortly, "I have nothing to regret."
"And yet," she persisted, "neither of you was old enough to—to care for the other truly." Her words were irrelevant, and she knew it.
"We were inseparable always," the young man answered. "We were children, both of us, but in Japan very often we are always children—always young in heart."
Cleo could not have told why she felt the sudden overwhelming rebellion against his allegiance to Numè, even though she knew only too well that Takashima's heart was safe in her own keeping. With a woman's perversity and delight in being constantly assured of his love for her in various ways, in dwelling on it to feed her vanity, and yes, in wishing to hear the man who loved her disclaim—even ridicule—one whom in the past he might have cared for, she said:
"Do you love her?"