“None,” he answered. “There was once a geisha—But we men of samurai blood are supposed to despise such weakness. Since then I have devoted my life to that which you so generously have helped me to attain.”
“You have no desire ever to marry?” I persisted.
“We hold it a duty to ancestors and families for every young man and maiden to marry,” he replied. “It is not as we wish, but as our parents choose. More than ten years ago His Highness the Shogun arranged with my father that I should marry his daughter Azai.”
“You refused! But of course you were still a boy.”
“You mistake. The arrangement was for the future. The maiden was then only six years of age.”
“Six? and ten years ago? Then she is now sixteen,—a princess of sixteen! Tomo, you’re as cold-blooded as a fish! A princess of sixteen, and you never before so much as hinted at your good fortune! Of course she is beautiful?”
He gazed at me in patient bewilderment over the inexplicable romantic emotionalism of the tojin.
“She is said to be beautiful,” he replied, calmly indifferent. “I cannot say. I have never seen her. You know that Japanese ladies do not mingle with men in your shocking tojin fashion.”