“It is said, as you know, that it is easier to beget children than to care for them!”
Silence a moment. Then she added with sudden passionate vehemence:
“I loathe the task you set me, mother-in-law. It is not possible for me to carry out your wishes.”
The expression on the older woman’s face should have warned her. The thin lips drew back in a line as cruel as when previously she had looked at the hapless Moonlight. Her voice was, if possible, harsher.
“It is better to nourish a dog than an unfaithful child!” she cried, got to her feet, and, drawing her skirts about her, moved away in stately dudgeon.
Ohano leaped up also, anxious to repair the injury she had done.
“Mother!” she cried out, chokingly, “put yourself in my place. Would it be possible for you to cherish in your bosom the child of one you abhorred?”
Slowly the outraged and angry look faded from Lady Saito’s face. It seemed pinched and haggard. Her voice was curiously gentle:
“That is possible, Ohano. I have given you an instance in my own honorable house, for as deeply as I hated your mother, so I have loved you!”
Ohano’s breath came in gasps. She was losing control of the icy nerve that had hitherto upheld her. She longed to fling herself upon the breast of her mother-in-law, who, despite her austere bearing to all, had always been kind to Ohano. Even as the two looked into each other’s face the cry of the one they were expecting to arrive was heard outside the screens. Matsuda had kept his word!