even as they made their way up the hill, among the booths, animal cages, swinging bridges and slides of the amusement park which formed an adjunct of the kagetsuen, the crash and cry of the jazz orchestra came down to them. dancing began early and a number of couples filled the floor of the large hall. the musicians, some fifteen of them, were all japanese, but they had mastered their peculiar art, the latest phase of the modernity invading japan. emphasis seemed to have been laid on modernity. with the exception of a few japanese lanterns, some characteristic masks, the arrangements were entirely in foreign style. wicker tables and chairs lined two sides of the hall, where tea was served, english fashion. for a moment this modern air struck kent as disappointing. then he looked about at the people, the dancers, those sitting at the tables, and the feeling vanished. a glitter of color shimmered and moved inside this tedious frame, brilliant kimono, gorgeous obi, rich silk, blazing reds, radiant blues, color in all shades and tints scintillating in motion. the colorless space, the commonplace garb of the men, seemed rather to heighten the effect of the exotic radiance of the women.
kipling's "for east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet" came to his mind. it might be true, but the scene before him seemed to belie it. was there ever such a melting-pot, raiment of a civilization thousands of years old, substantially unchanged, absorbed in the arms of extreme [pg 52]modernism, the unimaginative west and the evanescent romance of the orient moving and mingling in the rhythm of jazz. it was bizarre, discordant, but it made a picture odd, almost incongruously anachronistic, but interesting, strikingly illustrative of new japan.
they found a table and sat down to tea, kikuchi, his sister, the suzuki sisters and kent. they made up programs, but kent reserved only a few dances. he wished to have opportunity to watch, to study this heterogeneous potpourri of humanity.
japanese predominated, the men all in european clothing, most of the women in kimonos, though many wore foreign dress, generally simple, but well tailored, becomingly worn. there were many europeans and americans, nearly all men. it was difficult to determine their status; they were so much alike, most of them in pongee. of the women many were apparently business girls, stenographers from yokohama probably, though here and there might be seen one a bit indeterminable, who caused the mind to hesitate for a moment, in question.
then there were the eurasians, slim young men, inclined to be a shade dandified, smooth, graceful dancers; the girls slim also, but with a svelte luxuriance of body, a starry-eyed, almost tropical hint of potentialities of fiery passion slumbering lightly behind their sinuous grace. but, after all, his eyes would revert constantly to the kimonos. they made the high light and luster of the scene, stirring the imagination to wonder who were they, what were they, what were the thoughts, the ambitions, the desires and passions, in these faintly contoured breasts held tightly under silken folds above the stiff brocade sashes? difficult as it was to determine the character of the others, europeans and eurasians, he felt [pg 53]himself utterly baffled by the japanese women. any one of them might be a daughter of the aristocracy, or she might be a geisha, for all he could know. all the usual minute signs, the hints conveyed by dress, speech and gesture familiar in white women, the indescribable, subtle nuances, which made it possible at home to distinguish between the gentlewoman and the demimonde, were unknown to him here. it added to the fascination, the bewildering sense of not being able to know, to determine, even to guess with reasonable certainty, as if one were hesitatingly, cautiously venturing into a marvelously fascinating, strange, unexplored country.
a hundred questions clamored for explanations. who was this one; what could that one be? but his companions gave him little information. they did not know these people, they said. their tone conveyed to him that he must restrain his curiosity. it was plain that they insisted on being exclusive. they showed acquaintance with only one or two other groups, a party, much like their own, in which young watanabe, son of the shipping magnate, was the leader; another composed of the sons and daughters of wealthy silk merchants from yokohama. these, quite evidently, formed a set aside, remote from the gay throng about them.
he had indicated a girl who had passed them in the dance, rather full-figured, eurasian apparently, with large, languid eyes, who moved with a slow swaying grace before them. it was the sense of dreamlike voluptuousness that had attracted him.
"eurasian. i hear she is a moving-picture actress," answered kikuchi. "it is democratic, you see. there are all kinds here, girls of gentle birth and geishas, stenographers and actresses. it is queer to have that kind of thing here in japan, don't you think? our[pg 54] girls couldn't come into such mixed company abroad, you know. but we must dance, and there are only these places, this and a few smaller ones in tokyo; and the management is strict; in fact, i believe they pretend to keep out the geisha element, though i'm sure they wink at their coming so long as they behave themselves. it is really entirely respectable, and our girls are quite all right here so long as we keep to ourselves."
kent took the hint. he would have liked to have mingled at close range with the others, to venture into the tangle of dazzling, mysterious femininity where your partner of chance might turn out to be a demoiselle of ancient samurai lineage or a motion-picture queen, a stenographer or a geisha. still, he enjoyed his growing intimacy with the girls in his own party. the fact that they were confined mainly to their own circle brought them together, made it necessary to dance more often with his companions than would otherwise have been the case. he found special pleasure in kimiko-san. it was his first experience in dancing with a girl in kimono. he enjoyed the strange sense of grasping about the thick, stiff obi; it was something new. he was surprised at her agile vivacity. the orchestra was playing an amazing adaptation of "zigeunerweisen," stolen almost bodily by the enterprising pseudo-composer, retaining the gipsy fire and sparkle of the original, and she seemed to radiate the electric tingle, the flushing abandon thereof, confusing with the sense of odd contrast of hot, pulsing passion contained within the feudal conventionality of her gorgeous costume.
they sat out the next dance. they were alone at their table. "do you like to dance with me? can i dance?" her eyes flashed at him.
"it is marvelous. it seems so impossible that you[pg 55] can be so wonderful. and in zori; how do you do it?"
she laughed, delighted, looked about. then she slipped from her small foot, clad in tabi, the mitten-like white silk covering which takes the place of a stocking, a zori, sandal-like flat footgear, held in place by cross bands. she passed it to him in the shadow of the table. "see, it is slit. we have them made especially for dancing."
it seemed almost impossible that this might be such a prosaic thing as a shoe, this dainty, small object in his hand, surfaced with figured crimson and gold brocade, like a precious work of art, with its red silk cross bands.
"it simply adds to the illusion," he told her. "out of the mysterious orient has come to me a gorgeous cinderella slipper."
"who is cinderella?"
he explained, tritely and mechanically at first, restrained by the oddness of bringing forth such a puerility. but she was interested, leaned towards him intently. he warmed to the telling. how was it possible that she might be so interested in such a simple thing? a moment ago she had been a woman, palpitating, warm, in his arms. now she was a child, listening with eager wonder to a fairy tale. what was she; what were they, anyway, these girls,—children or women, or both? he enjoyed her intentness; tried to apply in the telling all the skill and artistry that he could contrive.
"oh, what a lovely story! i didn't know you could tell stories. you must tell me many more. i love it." she was radiantly delighted. it pleased him immeasurably. it would be a novel thing, a new experience in life, to recall to memory the half-forgotten childhood tales and to dress them up for her, in terms suitable to fanciful oriental setting, enjoying the[pg 56] tremulous reactions which he might thus cause in this beautiful creature with the clear, innocent mind of a child, clothed in the budding curves of the body of a woman.
they were silent for a moment, then she placed her hand on his arm. "but you still have my zori."
he had forgotten it. it lay in his hand, absurdly small and elegant. "if it were not really necessary for you to have it, i should like to keep it, as a souvenir, a reward for my story."
"but i can't give it to you now, you know," she was smiling, with just a shade of seriousness. "but you shall have your reward, if you really want such a trifling thing as this, for i wish to have many more stories from you. you must see me often and tell me many just like cinderella."
after that telling stories to kimiko-san became a regular part of their evenings at tsurumi. they came often, and he fell into the habit of thinking up his tales in advance, finding his themes among the rich treasures of the west, from mythology and history, folk tale and medieval romance, even from the old testament. it amused him to take the essential dramatic values, coloring the action so as to render it understandable to the japanese mind, dressing the material in oriental form. samson became a valiant samurai and delilah a perfidious geisha. hercules performed his prodigies in the atmosphere of the legendary momotaro. he became interested as the thought began to take definite form that here was an idea that he might some day work out into more concrete shape, and in the meantime he enjoyed the breathless interest, the childishly intent response which he always awakened in the girl.
it brought them closer together. their intimacy became recognized gradually by tacit understanding in[pg 57] their little group. he became her acknowledged cavalier. he wondered at times why this girl had become so much more attractive to him than the elder sister. he was still fond of tsuyuko-san, but the feeling remained the same, neither increasing nor decreasing, while he sensed that kimiko-san and he were coming constantly nearer to each other, more intimately parts of each other's thoughts. could it be that what attracted was in its intrinsic essence the glamor of the east, the charm of the seductive, unknown orient? the question would come to his mind—were they drifting towards a more definite relation; might not the love element already be germinating, unconsciously developing? he recalled the words of miss elliott that these girls were not children, that they were moved and driven by the same passions as those which dominate the more sophisticated women of the west. but he put the thought from him. his moral code was a simple and rigid one. he was married, and he must keep the faith. even though marriage had been a failure, as long as the bond existed he would play the game. he, at least, would keep his record clean, and while the relation remained there would be no dalliance for him with other women. so in the case of kimiko-san, as with other women, there could be no question of love relations. there were times when a lingering of her hand, a sidelong glance from dark almond eyes would cause a nervous titillation of agreeable unrest, would quicken his blood, give a flashing hint of something pleasantly, subtly dangerous, but sweet; but it was so evanescent, so intangible. the next moment she would be the gay, virginal child.
he felt that it was rather stupid, an absurd exaggeration of caution; still he had made opportunity to tell her of his wife, in california; but she had not[pg 58] been interested. "oh, she is far away," had been her only comment, carelessly laughing, with no accentuation of meaning; and she had turned instantly to light chatter of the moment. quite apparently it meant nothing to her. so the play kept on. he allowed himself to take pleasure from her radiant presence, her beauty, to rest his eye on her flower-like features, dark eyes, to enjoy the slenderness of her fingers, sense the palpitating magnetism of her lithe body and inhale the perfume of her hair, as he held her, swaying, in the rhythm of the dance. he felt pleasure in the thought that he might enjoy all this rich beauty, as one might that of a flower, a butterfly, unvitiated by sordid taint of sex interest.
but his delight in the charm of kimiko-san did not dull his interest in the others, the great throng of women, shimmering about him in their glimmering silks, unknown, mysterious to him. they piqued his curiosity. he wanted to know who they were, what they were, what were their lives, their thoughts, to come to know them as intimately as did these care-free youths who held them in the dance, chattered gayly with them at the tables. he felt as if he were being withheld from the familiarity of the charmed circle, resented a little the restraint which he was under when he was with kimiko-san and her sister. finally he decided that he would come alone. lüttich seemed to be there always. through him he would contrive himself to become a part of this marvelously fascinating butterfly whirl of strangely unknown femininity.
so he came alone, one afternoon, and sought out lüttich.
"i shall be glad to show you about," said the russian, "but the fact is that i have little time. i am busy. you see, i am here professionally. for the[pg 59] moment, at least, dancing has taken the upper hand over music with young japan, so i have become a dancing teacher. i have more than i can do. i dance from morning till night, giving lessons. it is not bad. they learn more easily than you would think. then, when they become a bit proficient, i take them out here; but i must dance with them myself, at first, to give them confidence. a lot of these girls, and men, too, for that matter, are my pupils. so you see i am busy as a matter of duty. n'importe. it pays, and one must live.
"however, let us sit down for a moment. have a drink." he called a boy. "you want to know who they are. well, they are a mixed crowd. all kinds; that's part of the charm, is it not? see that pretty young woman over there, just passing the pillar. she is the wife of the buddhist priest of the big temple on the other side of the hill. the young fellow with her is an american boy in some company in yokohama. priestess and office clerk. odd, isn't it? bizarre. still, i daresay mighty few of them realize it, or give it a thought. see that cadaverous eurasian with his japanese wife? they are pupils of mine. they dance well, don't they? well, two years ago they had never danced a step. now that is all they do; it is their whole life interest, a new step, the latest fox-trot. you can still see when she walks that she has not gotten over the duck-walk that they get from japanese geta; but you don't see it when she dances. these two have reduced life to terms of fox-trot. that has become their sole standard of measurement; they regard people as good or bad, according to how well they dance."
it was interesting. "tell me about more of them," said kent. "i have an absolutely insatiable curiosity."
"i'll do what i can, when i get the chance, but,[pg 60] as i told you——" he caught by the arm a young chap who was passing. "here, dick, i want you to look after my friend, kent. he wants to know some of the girls. show him about." he turned to kent. "dick here can do the honors better than i can. he knows nearly all of them. duty calls, i am off. be good."
dick grinned pleasantly. kent had noticed him often, a slim, vivacious man of about thirty, always laughing behind his small mustache, radiating effervescent vitality, infectiously bubbling over with joy of life.
"first of all you must know madame hirano," he said. "she's the boss. it pays to be on the good side of her. she rules with a hand of iron in a velvet glove, not so much velvet, either, if she should catch you here with a girl too much on the off side. then she'd give you the quick bounce. she's done it often enough. but she's a good fellow really. come along over and i'll introduce you."
they went over to a corner where the tyrant had a place of vantage, whence she might survey the entire hall. she was an elderly woman, handsomely dressed. as she sat there, surrounded by a small court of girls from the neighborhood, attached in an indefinite way to the establishment, with her sharp, black eyes constantly roving among the dancers, it was easy to see that here was one of these rather exceptional japanese women with will power and executive ability; that she was, as dick had said, the "boss."
she acknowledged the introduction graciously, with the slightest hint of condescension, consciousness of her power. it was evidently in kent's favor that he was a newspaperman. she told him, annoyedly, of the inimical attitude towards foreign dancing of the japanese press. they were so stupid, she complained,[pg 61] so old-fashioned. he began to ask her questions about the dancers. she looked at him sharply, as if a bit suspicious. he explained his motive—curiosity—how all these types which were familiar to her were strange to him. he wanted to become acquainted with the new woman of japan. for instance, he should like to meet some of the motion-picture actresses, a type which seemed so characteristic of the most modern tendencies of the country.
yes, some of them came here, she acknowledged, but she let it go at that, and gave him no information. he tried to press the subject. a slight, vivacious girl, in a splendid kimono in the black and white checkerboard-like pattern which was fashionable that year, fox-trotted nimbly past them. he had often noticed the passionate pleasure which she took in the dance, the cat-like grace with which she swung her body in intoxicated undulations, clinging to her partner, smiling up to him, teeth flashing in an alluring smile—a japanese theda bara, it seemed to him. there now, he ventured, was undoubtedly a lady of the screen.
"but no," she was shocked, with quick intake of breath. "what a mistake. that is a go-fujin, a lady of good, oh, extremely fine family. certainly not."
kent saw he had made a faux pas. he was glad when the cadaverous dance-mad eurasian led her off into the dance.
dick was laughing. "you certainly got off on the wrong foot, kent. i'd better do the honors. i know most of them. i ought to. i have lived here all my life. so, fire away."
it was fascinatingly interesting. he was a complete "who's who," able to sketch in a few sentences the entire curriculum vitæ of most of the dancers, go-fujin,[pg 62] actresses, stenographers, married women, rich men's daughters, geisha, girl students, who they were, whence they came, approachable or otherwise. before them, past them, moved the dancing couples, unconscious of the fact that their lives were being laid bare, their characters stripped, good-naturedly, laughingly, but with a sure, quick touch.
"that girl in pink foreign dress, with pink slippers, that's one of the thompson girls, eurasians; father is in silk. they live in honmoku. there are three of them, but one's married. that one, in red, the one with the pink beads, that's a stenographer with the standard oil in yokohama. now, that one, with the big, gold obi, i am not quite sure, but i think she is geisha. they say she's from shimbashi. it is odd, you know, most of the fuss in the japanese papers has been stirred up by the geisha guilds. they are afraid that if the men get used to foreign dancing, it will raise the devil with the geisha business, that they will come to these dances instead of spending fifty or a hundred yen an evening on geisha. and still the geisha themselves can't keep away from the dance places. the lure has got them, too."
he went on. one after one these elusive, dazzling women, who had so baffled kent's ventures at guessing, were singled out for brief, concise description, as if they were picked out individually, suddenly, by a searchlight, moving hither and yon in the throng, illuminating each one in intense glare for a moment, then allowing her to slip back into the background of the crowd, as the beam shifted to, rested on, stripped the mystery from another kimono-clad enigma; then moved on to still another.
"now, there are the kincaids," he went on. kent had been curious to know who they were, a middle-aged, [pg 63]quiet american, and a young woman, whose kimono, with its marvelously delicate texture, glorious though subdued luxuriance, was noticeable even in that dazzling kaleidoscope of rich oriental stuffs. he had taken the man to be some wealthy foreigner, "import and export" man probably, who took pleasure in showering his wealth on this slight, fairy-like beauty, to indulge his fancy by arraying her in constantly changing ornate frames for her enchanting loveliness.
"kincaid is a teacher in one of the most exclusive girls' schools in tokyo," dick was going on. "she was a pupil there, comes from an old samurai family, blood blue as indigo, but family estates, riches, glory, the whole business gone, all but pride, tenacious grasp on the old traditions. she's a beauty, isn't she? exquisite. kincaid was smitten. how he ever managed to see her alone is a mystery. it was romance. imagine yourself, in this day of wireless and gasoline, conducting a courtship after the fashion of feudalism, the infinitely obscure and meaningless minutiæ of the days of the shogunate. it can't have been anything else. the family must have insisted on it. kincaid is a deep oriental scholar. he could do it if any one could. he may even have enjoyed it, taken it as a sort of top examination, a supreme test, if he thought of it in that light. i don't know. nobody knows just what he went through. but he had the devil's own time. luckily, he had influential japanese friends, blue-blooded, too, but modern, and they helped him out. and then the girl was infatuated with him, crazy after him. you know they get all kinds of new ideas, these girls, socialism, free love, careers of their own, art, literature, foreign husbands, it may be one fad or another, anything. hers evidently was a foreign husband, or, at least, kincaid.[pg 64] so at last the family gave in; but that was only half the game. then came the wedding. it had to be japanese style, most formal ritual, san san kudo, three times three cups of sake drunk by bride and groom and all that. that didn't bother kincaid. probably he liked it. but the expense! you know these high-class japanese weddings sometimes run up to hundreds of thousands of yen. there are all kinds of expensive gowns for the bride, kimonos, obi, ornaments, god knows what. then the banquet, hordes of guests, at fifteen, twenty, thirty yen a plate, something like that. and then, finally, the presents. you know in japan the wedded folk must give return presents, usually about twice the value of those they get. you get married. i give you something utterly useless, a vase, a kakemono, and then you must come back with something quite as useless but worth twice the price. they say it cost kincaid thirty thousand yen, which wasn't so bad under the circumstances. he spent every yen he had. that was over two years ago, and they are still saving, paying off their wedding debts, living in a couple of rooms. she does most of the housework, but they are both happy. you can see it. he gets his pleasure taking her here and there, his prize, in her wonderful kimonos, the trousseau, intensely proud of her; and she adores him. look at her. her eyes are always on him. she has realized her dream; he has his. no room for regret, no thought of it. romance, the new, modern west and the age-old east, they have become one. so it works sometimes."
the orchestra blared into a new dance. dick went off for a partner somewhere in the other end of the hall. kent leaned back, summarizing, trying to classify his new knowledge. in a way the glib explanations, the reduction into terms of commonplace[pg 65] of these people, these women, dimmed the picture a little, detracted from its attraction of being unknown; still, he had had but a glimpse behind the veil. what he had learned would but serve to initiate him further, to penetrate more deeply, to insinuate himself more intimately into this attractive, strange world of utterly foreign thoughts, fashions, modes of life.
behind him, in the garden outside, staring through the open windows, a fringe of japanese, the ordinary folk who found their pleasures in the slides, and swings and other marvels of the park, were discovering rare entertainment in watching the dancers, the strange new foreign custom of women, gentlewomen at that, dancing together with, in the arms of, men. abstractedly he listened to their churlish comment.
"they have the luck, these chaps," a burly fellow of the rickshaw man type nudged his friend. "for two yen they can put their arms about these girls, pretty girls, ladies. it's cheaper and better fun than playing with geisha."
the voice of a woman cut in; her hair, dressed high, with a great, heavily oiled knot, proclaimed that she was married. "i don't like it. it's dirty."
a girl sitting next to kent laughed. she had noticed that he had caught the remark. "funny, isn't it?" she remarked to him. he aroused himself from his thoughts. he had not noticed her. it was the priestess. she chatted on. he had not been introduced, but, would she dance? why, certainly; he was a friend of dick's. so he found himself in the midst of the whirl, enjoying the thought that he, himself, had now become part of this bewildering inconsistency, fox-trotting with a buddhist priestess, absurd, amusing, but delectable. she danced with full-bodied enjoyment, chatting vivaciously, with a nimble, flash-like wit. when they had returned to their seats, he led[pg 66] her to tell him about the others. she knew them well, as did dick, but he enjoyed her characterizations, the japanese point of view.
the full-figured eurasian girl, whose dreamy voluptuosity had attracted his attention the first night, when he had been with the suzuki girls, passed in the dance, nodded over her partner's shoulder to the priestess.
"do you know that girl? i hear she is a motion-picture actress?"
"naruhodo," she was noncommittal. "yes, i see her often here. i have spoken to her."
"then introduce me, please. i know so few people here."
she hesitated for a moment, overcame her doubts. "all right, come."
the dance had finished. the girl was sitting at one of the large tables, with two or three other girls and some young foreigners. he hesitated in his turn. it was a bit awkward. still, the die had been cast. he must see it through. the priestess laid her hand on his sleeve. "this is mr. kent. he wants to meet you."
the girl nodded to him slightly, looking at him, her big eyes wide in surprise. the others at the table stared. utter silence. he wished he were a hundred miles away. but he was in for it. "please, miss ——" hang it, the priestess had not even given her name. he slid over it. "i am quite strange here. i wonder if you would be kind enough to give me a dance?"
"i am sorry. my dances are all taken." the others still stared. he bowed. the priestess was already in retreat. he trailed after her, to the corner of the lady tyrant. damn it. he bit his lip in resentment. who was she, this eurasian, to hold [pg 67]herself too high, too precious, as if he were not good enough for her? still, of course, the girl was right. what a fool he was immediately to think of race, when he had always insisted, did, in fact, maintain that he had no race prejudice. good for her, whoever she might be. but he had been an ass. he had made a bad beginning.
dick appeared. kent told him. he laughed. "by jove, but that's funny. you do need a guardian. the moment i leave you, you start adventuring on your own. that's a very respectable girl, a stenographer in tokyo, nice parents, you know. she's no motion-picture lady. you can't do like that. if you are so anxious to meet the motion-picture folk, why didn't you tell me. the fact is that there are a couple right here. i had sort of a halfway date with them. come on. we'll take them to dinner down in one of the tea houses below in the park. you eat japanese chow, don't you?"
the two girls were at a table at the farther end of the hall. he had noticed them often. one of them, the elder, he had guessed to be professional of some sort, theatrical, because of her kimono, a bit too bright, and especially her unusual coiffure, after some eccentric foreign fashion, in a mode which he had never seen, a sort of high, long cone, reminiscent of an assyrian helmet, which showed to advantage her luxuriant hair, black with a faint tinge of chestnut, effective, but odd. the other was one of the girls who had eluded classification. she had puzzled him, with her large, voluptuous mouth, slow smile showing teeth which might really be described as pearly, but with her quiet manner, almost diffident, giving the lie to those sensuous lips.
"o-tsuru-san. kin-chan." there was no trouble over these introductions. the girls laughed, made room at the table. "no," said dick. "it's time to eat. let us go below."
the tea house was typically japanese. they slipped off their shoes and squatted down at a low table, on zabuton. the girls were at ease, friendly. he felt as if he had known them for years. kin-chan, the elder, evidently lived for excitement. she drank continuously. "dick-san," she complained, "we should have had a koku-tail before we came down here, but, never mind, we'll have some by-and-by."
she chattered incessantly, flitting from subject to subject, light gossip of tokyo, dancing, acting, kimono styles, fashions in rings—she let it be known that she was fond of rubies set in platinum—places to go to, hot spring resorts, how she liked foreigners, the wiles of geisha. it amused him to listen to her. as they went back to the dance hall, up the hill, she leaned on his arm confidentially. the perfume from her hair came to him pleasantly. he inhaled it, enjoying it, and her warm, close presence, the bewildering chatter affording flash-like glimpses of the mind of an engaging phase of modern feminine japan.
as they danced, she chattered on, touched on this subject and that, one thought crowding away the other before it had been more than half expressed, giving him a sense as were he surrounded, enveloped, in an aura of bright, strange, girlish musings, a glimmering of myriad fragmentary ideas, oddly, entrancingly interesting. he was beginning to learn what lay inside these budding breasts under the tensely tightened kimono silks—at last.
the other girl said little, smiled, with glimmer of white teeth behind her full, soft lips, but she seemed to absorb her pleasure by feeling it, through the senses, silently. little by little he tried to induce her to tell about herself. was she, too, a motion-picture actress?oh, no! she went to higher school. she lived with her parents.
he mentioned it to dick, in english. it was delightfully safe, even right in front of the girls.
"she's a liar," said dick bluntly. "she's an actorine of some sort at the imperial. probably a minor one. i don't know. but in a way she's my girl, for the present. she probably wants to throw you off, to hold you off. they have more guile than you think, these girls, behind all their childishness."
so kin-chan, little-gold, fell to kent, and he saw the girls home, to tokyo, as dick lived in yokohama. he enjoyed kin-chan, arranged with her to come to tsurumi again. after that, when the suzukis could not come, she was often his companion.
he found constant pleasure in studying her thoughts, in seeing japan, japanese life, through japanese eyes; learned that in her he might experience a frankness which could never be obtained from the men. it was evident that she liked him. at times she even quite openly encouraged him, as if she were impatient with his slowness in response. as they became more intimate, she told, without reserve, of her life. impatience at the drudgery and bonds of a lower middle-class family. then she had begun to go to foreign motion-picture shows. at first it had been the pictures of foreign children which had taken her fancy. kawaii; they were so dear! so she had run away, to yokohama, where there were many foreigners. she had wanted to take care of children. then, after a while, she had become an actress.
gradually, as their friendship became older, she gave more detail. he was amazed at the frankness with which she displayed to him her intimate life. at last, one evening when they were alone in a discreet little tea house in tokyo to which she had taken him[pg 70]—she had become his wondrously efficient guide into the innermost mazes of the great rambling metropolis—she threw an arm about his neck, as they were sitting at a window, looking out over the roofs and told him about herself.
it was a girl friend who had persuaded her to come to yokohama, and she had taken her to a house, a bad house, where foreigners came. she had been frightened, she had cried. she had wanted to return home; but she was afraid of the parents. and it had been a nice class of foreigners who had come there. they had treated her courteously, been kind to her, kinder than the japanese men had been at home. so—shikataganai, it couldn't be helped. but she had hated it. she had stayed only a few months. she had learned to be independent. and then luck had come her way. one of the foreigners, who was in japan selling american films, had obtained employment for her with a japanese company which made pictures. oh, that wasn't the end; she smiled bitterly. the japanese men were just like the rest, one must let them have their way if one would succeed. "but now i have succeeded, and i can be independent of them. and i am. there are only half a dozen real japanese stars, and i am one of them. pictures of me go abroad. i get two hundred yen a month."
it surprised him, the wage, so infinitesimally small as compared with the fortunes harvested by the pickfords, the chaplins, in the united states. why?
"oh, it is these japanese men. they never want to give us women a chance. they won't advertise our names. they won't feature us, as they do in america. they are afraid that then we should get popular and ask for more money." but she was impatient at the interruption. this phase of the matter was not what she wanted to dwell on. "i don't like japanese men. they don't treat us nicely, courteously, as do you foreigners. if they do, it is only in the beginning. in the end, very soon, they are all the same. i like foreigners. i am not a bad girl any more. i never wanted to be. but, sometimes i feel that i should like a sweetheart, a foreign sweetheart, who would love me, as foreigners do, and be good to me——" the clasp of the arm about his neck tightened. the fragrance from her hair, the subtle, evanescent perfume which he delighted in, which had become to him characteristic of her, became overpoweringly sweet. she would be his. she was his now, if he cared to take her. they were tempting, these japanese girls, with their quaint, childlike ways, unsophisticated, even though this one had passed through the mud. the charm of the japanese women! kimiko-san flashed into his mind. it was difficult to hold out against their seductiveness. still, he had made up his mind to play the game with his wife. and yet? he felt that he was hovering. how deliciously soft she was as she clung to him, closer.
the sliding door behind them clattered. a maid came in. the tenseness dissipated. it was like a shock in its suddenness. trite common sense came back to him, over him, like a shower of cold water, irritating, but dominatingly. by cæsar, it had been a close call.