Moonlight’s shocked glance had gone from her husband’s face to the opposite shoji. There, in dumb show, a maid beckoned to her. Without a word her lovely little head bowed in meek assent; she began upon her first menial task.
When she was gone Gonji looked scowlingly at the back of his mother’s head—she had turned her face rigidly from him. He felt keenly the danger threatening his wife, the one he adored. He knew the exact power in the hands of the mother-in-law, the cruel whip of authority it was possible for her to wield. That Moonlight would be forced to succumb to the common lot of many unhappy wives he had not realized. Secretly he determined to help her in every way possible within his power.
“What has come over you?” His mother’s voice broke upon his miserable reverie, and it was as harsh as the one she employed to his wife. “Is it a new fashion of the geisha-house perchance—to answer a parent’s question with silence?”
“Did you question me, mother? I am sorry I did not hear you.”
“Oh, it is of no consequence. Besides, you are not listening, even now. Your eyes are still upon the screen through which the insignificant daughter-in-law passed to do me service.”
He flushed and bit his lips. Something in his mother’s baleful look moved him to an impetuous cry:
“Mother! Do not hate my wife! If you could but know her as she is, so sweet and lovely and—”
“There is no medicine for a fool!” snarled his mother, enraged at the boy’s apparent infatuation.
Moonlight, who had pushed the sliding doors open, heard the words, and now she paused, looking from one to the other. Gonji hastened across to her and seized the pail of water from her hand.
“It is too heavy for hands so small—and so lovely!” he cried, and then, as though aghast at his own words, he again pleadingly faced his mother.