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Updated: June 8, 2025
It is a wonderful country, I am told; and it does not seem right that Asako should know nothing about it. Besides, I should like to look into her affairs and find out about her investments." Murata was staring at his yellow boots with an embarrassed air.
Asako, arrayed in a Japanese kimono, and to all appearance as Japanese as her cousin, was sitting in the Fujinami tea-parlour. She had not understood much of the lesson in tea-ceremony at which she had just assisted. But the exceeding propriety and dignity of the teacher, the daughter of great people fallen upon evil days, had impressed her.
Among this débris children were playing unchecked, smearing their faces with rice cakes, and squashing the flies on the window pane. Were any of these her relatives? Asako shuddered. How much did she actually know about these far-away cousins? She could just remember her father.
These serpents were charming people, amusing men and smart women, all anxious to make the acquaintance of the latest sensation, the Japanese millionairess and her good-looking husband. Asako lunched with them and dined with them and sat with them near the sea in wonderful bathing costumes which it would be a shame to wet.
If he had been alone in the world it would not have mattered much; but Asako, poor little Asako, the innocent cause of this disaster, she was ruined too. She who loved her riches, her jewellery, her pretty things, she would have to sell them all. She would have to follow him into poverty, she, who had no experience of its meaning.
"She is married to an Englishman, who will one day be a peer in England. This was a marriage of political importance. It was a proof of the equal civilisation of our Japan with the great countries of Europe. It is most important that this Asako should be sent back to England as soon as possible, and that she should speak good things about Japan."
She liked him to tease her, just as a child likes to be teased, while all the time on the verge of tears. With Asako, tears and laughter were never far apart. "Why do you tease me because I am Japanese?" she would sob; "besides, I'm not really. I can't help it. I can't help it!"
It was the most likely game which had arrived at the Imperial Hotel for years, ever since the American millionaire's wife who ran away with a San Francisco Chinaman. But to Geoffrey, when he broke up the gathering, the boy sans were just a lot of queer little Japs. Asako was lying on her sofa, reading. Titine was brushing her hair.
"Not yet, big captain," she expostulated; "I want to take you right to the far end of the lake where the bears live." "Very well," agreed Geoffrey, "to-morrow morning early, then; for the next day I really must go." He wrote to Asako a long letter with much about the lake and Yaé Smith, promising to return within forty-eight hours. At daybreak next morning Yaé was hammering at Geoffrey's door.
In the hush and charm of that little chamber of the spirits, the face of the elder woman looked soft and sweet. She opened the volume at the middle, and pushed it in front of Asako. She saw the photograph of a Japanese girl seated in a chair with a man standing at her side, with one hand resting on the chair back.
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