"This is my distress, father," began Yuki. "I am a Japanese girl, with my first loyalty toward you and my native country;—yet, in that new land where you sent me,—I have come—I have grown honorably to feel, almost without warning, the—influence of a—person."
Tetsujo looked faintly surprised. "Indeed, I trust so, my child. You would be but a poor, unresponsive creature to have felt no influences. It is from such things that character and knowledge are builded. There were many persons who influenced you, I take it,—some for good, perhaps some for evil. To an intelligent mind a warning is valuable. Now, at home, you will have the leisure to sort and adapt such impressions, casting away those that are trivial and employing those which may be of service to Japan."
"It is augustly as you indicate, dear father," returned Yuki, the distress in her dark eyes deepening. "I attempted to observe many things. But the influence I spoke of is not that kind you are thinking. It—it—is a very special influence. In America they call it—love." She bowed her head over slightly. A faint pink tide of embarrassment showed on her forehead and in the small bared triangle of her throat.
Tetsujo controlled himself well. "You mean—love—'ai'—the love of a man and a woman who wish to marry?"
"In America one thinks very differently of such matters," said Yuki, her eyes still lowered. "Yet I suppose the feeling is honorably the same everywhere. Yes, father, it is of such love that I now must tell you."
"We have many Japanese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country, of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,—but the term which you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life."
"Father," she pleaded, "I am still a Japanese. I know how it must seem to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I must speak."
"You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?"
"To him—that one—I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve.
"Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother, Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better than I."