“Yet,” said her step-mother, “the pain inflicted by a woman, who is weak, is nothing to that inflicted by a man. What will you do when your husband beats you?”
“I do not know,” said Azalea mechanically, and then added slowly, “but I should not weep, mother-in-law. I would not give him that pleasure. But—” she paused; “all husbands do not beat their wives. Perhaps the gods will favor me with a kind one. I should not marry him otherwise.”
“How will you test his kindness?” asked her mother scornfully.
“I will know,” she answered. “I will see him and love him before I marry him.”
She arose and fluttered her sleeves back and forth. Her arm was in pain. She moved it thus mechanically as a nervous method of relief, but Madame Yamada had seen the figure coming along the white road toward their house, and she leaped to her feet like a savage.
“What!” she cried. “You stand shamelessly in the open doorway shaking your arms in unmaidenly fashion because a man approaches.”
“I did not even see him,” said Azalea, shrinking before the anger of her step-mother’s expression, “and, mother-in-law, see for yourself. The man is Matsuda Isami. Is it likely I would fling my sleeves at him?”
“At him most of all,” said her step-mother hoarsely. “Do not deny it, shameless girl!”
Before Azalea could recover from the surprise occasioned by these words, Madame Yamada, with one black look cast back at her, had left the kitchen, and was hastening to the front part of the house, there to prostrate herself with slavish sweetness and politeness before the exalted Matsuda Isami.