VIII
It was a good thing for Soichi that he had received the proper Japanese training in emotional self-repression or he certainly would have betrayed his secret very soon after his return to the house in Azalea Street. It not only filled him to the overflowing point; it enveloped him roundabout. He was drowned in it. Only the strong force of habit saved him, and the preoccupation of his parents prevented them from noticing his sudden distraction and absent-mindedness. Four days went by, two so long that night seemed never to come, and two so short that he remembered of each nothing but the blissful hour when he had seen O-Mitsu. They had lived over again the past and drunk the joy of the present. Then came the specter. Boys and girls who fall in love in Japan, where the nakodo does most of the wooing, have even less chance than Western lovers for the proverbially rare smooth course of affection. And when he is of such humble descent as Soichi and she the daughter of a Samurai, that little chance is very small indeed. But they were true Japanese and had no lack of courage. They looked their trouble squarely in the eyes and questioned only how to meet it.
“Do you remember the teacher who frightened me so that first day at school?” she asked, going back again to the beginning of all things. “When they told me first that I should not play with you I asked him if it were so. Do you know what he said?”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, a little sadly, for he saw how always the specter stood between them.
“He was a Samurai,” she went on, “and he knew. He said the Emperor had destroyed the old distinction and we were all alike.”
“Yes,” he replied, “before the law. But there are some things that not even the Emperor’s law can reach.”