“You are resigned,” he repeated, disappointment showing in his transparent face.
“Yes,” she said, with a fleeting upward glance at his face.
She suddenly laughed quite merrily.
“Come,” she said, “let us go home. I must humbly submit myself to the august will of my honorable parent.”
Koma said never a word. Manlike, he was regretting his late words of advised self-sacrifice.
XXIV
It was a slow pilgrimage homeward that these two young people made, for they stopped at every familiar place on the hills and by the bay that they had known as children. And, like children, they dipped their faces in the shining water of the little brook that wound its way around the hills and fell in a tiny waterfall below into the bay.
They slipped into a darkened temple, touching with reverent, loving fingers the deserted images within. At the little village on the shore, where they had lived together as children, they halted and lunched at a tiny tavern whose garden was the shore of the bay. And when they had struck the road that led to Sendai they turned their steps backward and wandered along the white beach of Matsushima.
The girl, whose heart had been so heavy for days with the thought of leaving her home, now with the light-heartedness of a child seemed to have forgotten all her troubles and to revel in the joy of living.