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It would be nice to see green fields again, wouldn't it, Geoffrey dearest?" The voice of the Spring was speaking clearly. "And you really want to go to Japan, sweetheart? It's the first time I've heard you say you want to go." "Uncle and Aunt Murata in Paris used always to say about now, 'If we go back to Japan we shall be in time to see the cherry-blossoms."

He had left his whole fortune in trust for her, and the interest was forwarded regularly to M. Murata by a Tokyo lawyer, to be used for her benefit as her guardian might deem best. This money was to be the only tie between Asako and her native land.

Murata was the manager of a big Japanese firm in Paris. He had spent almost all his life abroad and the last twenty years of it in the French capital, so that even in appearance, except for his short stature and his tilted eyes, he had come to look like a Frenchman with his beard

She became a daughter of the well-to-do French bourgeoisie, strictly but affectionately disciplined with the proper restraints on the natural growth of her brain and individuality. Geoffrey Barrington was not very favourably impressed by the Murata household. He wondered how so bright a little flower as Asako could have been reared in such gloomy surroundings.

"Then do you think she is homesick sometimes for Japan?" said her husband. "Oh no," smiled Murata. The little wizened man was full of smiles. "She left Japan when she was not two years old. She remembers nothing at all." "I think one day we shall go to Japan," said Geoffrey, "when we get tired of Europe, you know.

Asako's frock and jewellery were admired, but without that note of angry envy which often brightens the dullest talk between ladies in England. Then, they sat down to an atrocious lunch eaten in complete silence. When the meal was over, Murata drew Geoffrey aside into his shingly garden. "I think that you will be content with our Asa San," he said; "the character is still plastic.

I think I ought to know." Murata began to laugh nervously, as all Japanese do when embarrassed. "Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, "but I do not know myself. The money has been paid regularly for nearly twenty years; and I know the Fujinami are very rich. Indeed, Captain Barrington, I do not think Asako would like Japan. It was her father's last wish that she should never return there."

To cut off a child from its family, of which by virtue of vested interests it must still be an important member, was a proceeding so revolutionary to all respectable Japanese ideas that even the enlightened Murata demurred. In Japan the individual counts for so little, the family for so much.

It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, without a master's hand?

I do not think you will have trouble with her." "He talks about her rather as if she were a horse," thought Geoffrey. Murata went on, "The Japanese woman is the ivy which clings to the tree. She does not wish to disobey." "You think Asako is still very Japanese, then?" asked Geoffrey. "Not her manners, or her looks, or even her thoughts," replied Murata, "but nothing can change the heart."