His tone startled her. It was only a little, after all, that she knew of men, and there was a side of Soichi that she did not suspect, because of the difference in their training.
“Ah, but he would,” she declared earnestly. “You do not know how quick and hot his temper is.”
“Perhaps I should have killed him,” Soichi answered. “It would have been a fight, not a murder.”
The words surprised him almost as much as they did her, but for a different reason. That he had said them to her was the wonder to him; that he should have the feeling they disclosed was her amazement. It was the spirit of the Samurai, the spirit that all her training told her belonged only to them, and yet he revealed it as lightly as if it were a thing of supreme indifference, a commonplace, the matter-of-fact possession of every man. A new joy came to her with the unexpected knowledge, and instantly new hope sprang up, vague and undefined, but none the less profound. Somehow, some way this unimagined quality in him would throw down the hateful barrier of prejudice and set them free. There was a deepened tenderness in the eyes that answered his gaze.
“You said there would have been no hope if I had not done that,” he went on, after a little. “Did you think Kokan would ever forgive that blow?”
“He is brave and true,” she answered softly, “even if he is proud and scornful. Too brave himself not to admire bravery in another. He thought you were afraid, but now he knows and in time his anger will die away.”
“You do not know him so well, I am afraid,” he said. “To be struck by one he despised so much was an insult he will never forget or forgive. Hope, for us, must count on something else, yet we must not be without hope. You know the saying, ‘Even a calamity, if left alone three years, may turn into a fortune.’”
She was strangely happy again. It seemed quite natural now that they should face hopefully forward. She looked out over the shining sea and began to build dreams, queer dreams that left the Now by unknown paths and reached the Then by unmarked roads. But always they arrived there, and it was a country of unclouded happiness where she and he lived in perfect peace. A long time he sat silent, watching her with eyes that signaled his mood. At length she turned to him with a little sigh.
“I must go home,” she said. “My father will say I stay very long at the shrine and go very often.”
“So long a time and yet so short,” he said, and rose to his feet. An unpleasant thought crossed his mind and she saw its shadow.