As I asked myself the question the room re-echoed with a ripple of gentle laughter, melodious as the note of an Æolian harp, sweeter than the tinkle of fairy bells. I faced to front, and saw floating towards us a vision as wondrously beautiful as a Buddhist angel. Against the jet blackness of her high coiffure glinted comb crests and pin heads of amber and coral, while from slender throat to tiny feet she was enveloped in a robe of scarlet silk, gorgeously embroidered with flowers in gold thread, and her plump little hand fluttered a vividly colored fan.
Like my friend’s, the girl’s face showed the samurai type in its oval contour, small mouth, and aristocratic nose,—features so markedly different from the broad, flat faces of the lower classes. The characteristic lack of prominence of her brows and the bridge of her nose lent to the upper part of her face a mildness of expression well in keeping with the inimitable gracefulness and gentleness of her bearing, but her rosebud mouth and lustrous black eyes held all the subtle allurement of a Spanish Carmen’s.
Bound about as she is by narrow skirts, modesty compels the Japanese woman to assume in walking a short, scuffling, intoed gait, with forward bent body and head. Yet even to this awkward movement Kohana San, the dancer, contrived to give a semblance of grace as she hastened forward to prostrate herself at the feet of my friend.
The little maid was tripping from the room. The geisha sank down before us, her forehead upon the mat between her little olive-hued hands, and her body quivering with an excess of emotion which even a lifetime of training could not enable her to repress.
Yoritomo gazed down upon her as serenely impassive in look as a bronze Buddha. Yet beneath his placid tone even I could detect the hidden note of tenderness: “Kohana, we have come to you from a long journey.”
“My lord!” she murmured, “to my lowly house first of all!”
She rose to her knees and gazed into his face with a look of such radiant love and devotion that I forgot on the instant my suspicion of her loyalty. And in the same moment I forgave the thick powdering of rice flour upon her face, and the dark red stain of thistle juice upon her lips, and the greasy pomade with which her hair was matted and stiffened.
For a minute or more the lovers sat silent and motionless, gazing into one another’s eyes, Yoritomo gravely smiling, Kohana melting to happy tears. That was their greeting after three years of separation!
“Tomo,” I whispered in English, “do you not see how she has waited and longed for you all the time since you left her? Console her for the past! I will go out and leave you.”
“Do not trouble,” he replied. “Have I not told you that we Japanese do not kiss and embrace?” He turned and spoke to the girl, who was glancing at me out of the corners of her long eyes with intense curiosity: “Kohana, my brother is weary, and we have not bathed in two days.”