“Is that so, O-Nami-san? Where did he come from?”
“From the town.”
“From so far away? Where is he going, now, O-Nami-san?”
“He told me he was going to Manchuria.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. He may be going there to make money, or he may be going there to die, for all I know.”
I raised my eyes at this point, and looked into my companion’s face and there I saw a smile dying away, the meaning of which I did not comprehend.
“He is my husband.”
The woman said it with the swiftness of lightning, catching me entirely unguarded. I had not had the faintest idea of trying to get such information out of her. Nor did I expect that she would go the length of telling me all that. She continued:
“Well, Sensei, has it shocked you?”